Technology has become the way of life. It is not a part of life: it is life. It used to be something that was considered a privilege but now it seems to be a necessity. The idea behind it was to make life easier and give us more opportunities than we had before regarding information and sharing. This is still the case; however, technology is now becoming overused and unnecessary in certain situations.

Because of technology, are we becoming dumber and more antisocial?

Yes.

(More to come on being antisocial, but for now, our shrinking brains…)

We, as a culture and especially as high school students, are starting to rely on technology to think for us. When was the last time you were in class and noticed a friend completing his or her assignment from a picture of another classmate’s already completed work? If you’re being honest, probably last period.

With the introduction of Google and other search engines, answers to questions and other ideas are easily accessible. Having a smartphone in the palm of our hand is making it difficult to do our own work and easier to access the Internet and other people’s work for the answers. Not only is that cheating, but it is lazy. We are reinforcing the notion that there is no need to think or be able to solve problems when it is all online. We are starting to lack the thrive of wanting to learn and asking questions because we believe it is time consuming.

This is decreasing our innovation as a society. Having an original idea is becoming more scarce in this generation because we prefer getting things done quickly and conveniently rather than putting forth our best efforts. With this mindset, it is becoming more and more possible for other countries, such as China, to become the big man on top. I don’t think any of these problems are insuperable, and a smart culture can work a way around this rut and reboot innovation if we choose to step up. Starting with us.