An Introduction to the Effects of Technology on Our Society Today

Technology and Society

Technology affects our society significantly. It has become an integral part in our life by bringing so much benefits to us. Technology improves the efficiency in education, medicine, transportation, entertainment and more. When mentioning of how technology impacts our society, people will think of its positive influence. However, according to Newton’s third law of motion, “For every action, there is an opposite reaction”. Indeed, technology is beneficial to us, however at the same time it brings negative consequences. Although the rise of new technology has improved our daily lives by bringing many conveniences, it increases the rate of obesity and the isolation in our society.

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Technology makes people become more isolated. It significantly impacts our social interaction. One might think that social network brings people together. For example, you can easily find your long lost friends on a social network such as Facebook or Twitter. However, technology is also ruining our face to face communication. In “Alone together”, Sherry Turkle determines how social network and texting culture has changed communication between an individual and his/her family, friends.

“People today are more connected to one another than ever before in human history, thanks to Internet-based social networking sites and text messaging. But they’re also more lonely and distant from one another in their unplugged lives” (Turkle). The picture of people holding their phone and texting is not hard to find in public. You can easily see a group of friends go to a restaurant and all of them spend more time playing with their phones than having conversation with their friends. Briefly, technology seems to connect people together but it actually disconnects people.

As a matter of fact, technology does not only make people lack communication, it also makes people lack physical activity. As a consequence, the rate of obesity increases. Many studies have determined the relationship between the adoption of new technologies and negative health outcomes such as obesity, heart disease, Type 2 diabete, and the list goes on. According to the Healthday News, “The increasing amount of time that people spend using computers, playing video games and watching TV is a major factor in rising rates of obesity worldwide” (Preidt).

A research at the Milken Institute in California finds that more than 500 million adults worldwide are obese, according to background information in the news release. “The United States has the highest percentage of obese adults (nearly 34 percent), followed by Mexico (30 percent), New Zealand (about 26 percent), Australia (nearly 25 percent) and Canada (just over 24 percent)” (Preidt). Furthermore, the research reports that obesity rates are also rising in many developed countries. The obesity rate in China has been more than doubled from 2.5 percent to 5.7 percent between 2002 and 2008. In other words, technology is a factor that causes the rise of obesity.

In spite of the fact that the arrival of technology leads to many negative consequences, technology actually brings more benefits than its negative affects to our lives. It is impossible to deny the importance of technology nowadays. For instance, in education, computer has become a helpful tool for both students and teachers. A student can easily find information for his assignment or project with a computer has an access to Internet.

By using a projector and a computer, a teacher can make the lesson in class more clear and interesting to her students. Additionally, nowadays transportation has also improved a lot. Thus, you can easily travel from a state to another state or from a country to another country. By making transport easy to everyone, one can travel around the world, and adopt new cultures from other countries. As previously stated, technology has become very important and helpful to our daily lives.

As mentioned in the book “What technology wants?” by Kevin Kelly, “Technology wants what life wants: Increasing efficiency; Increasing opportunity; Increasing emergence; Increasing complexity; Increasing diversity; Increasing specialization; Increasing ubiquity; Increasing freedom; Increasing mutualism; Increasing beauty; Increasing sentience; Increasing structure; Increasing evolvability.” Modern technology has made our lives so much easier. Our society demands these technology to get better and better. We forget to look back at the negative affect that has on our daily lives as a society. We all have to admit the importance that technology has brought to our lives. However, we are overusing technology, by that it has raised a concern to many people. As technology gets better, will our society get worse?

Works Cited

1. Kevin, Kelly. What Technology Wants? New York: Penguin Books, 2010.
2. Preidt, Robert. "Modern Technology Adds to Worldwide Obesity Woes: Report." 23 August 2012. Healthday.
3. Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together. Basic Books, 2012.

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