5 Reasons Why Technology Is Making Us Dumber

Unless you are a hardcore historian, I doubt you would choose to go back in time and live there, even if it’s the beautiful Greco-Roman era. Try camping outdoors for a week and you will understand why our ancestors were so eager to leave Mother Nature behind and cloak themselves with technology. But is the ease that technology has enabled actually harming our intellect and our independence? Well, we have a guest author with us who will be talking on that very point. Please welcome, Vivian Lavely, as she directs us through a fascinating piece about how technology is actually making us dumb (we wouldn’t want that now, would we?). Continue Vivian…

Since the dawn of time, humans have been creating technology to make life easy. In the past fifty years, the surge of available technology has made life even easier. Surely there is a high level of skill and intelligence required to make one of these new and revolutionary technologies but are the people, who regularly use these items, becoming less intelligent?

1. Calculators make us lazy.

Simple math has been drilled into us from the time we first entered school starting with addition, but as we advanced in math our dependency upon calculators seemed to increase.

Thirty years ago cashiers could easily determine the amount of change that would be needed by processing the transaction in their mind. Recently during the massive power outage in Roanoke, Virginia, I went to the local gas station for a small purchase totaling $1.07 and handed the cashier a $5 bill. The girl at the register, trying her best to handle the large amount of customers in line, quickly whipped out her calculator to determine the change instead of processing the $3.93 in change in her head.

2. Cell phones make us lose our memory.

I remember in the 90’s, each of my friends were assigned a 7-digit phone number that I could easily recite at any given time. If you wanted a number for someone, you had to look it up in your local phone book and punch it in the phone.

Now with the latest in cellular technology, if you want to call for pizza but don’t have the number handy or a phone book, just look it up in your phone’s browser and click to connect. For friends or family that you regularly call, just press and hold #2 for mom or #3 for dad.

3. GPS gets us lost.

Cross-country drives or even exploring a new location is fun. Before technology you had to strategically plan out your route and keep your map handy in case you got lost. If you didn’t have a map, a local gas station or rest stop had the information posted and readily available for you.

With the introduction of GPS travelling has become easier, but what happens when your GPS doesn’t work right? I tested my cell phone’s GPS on the road to Georgia to see how it worked out. I wanted to know how accurate it was. Through the four hour drive, I apparently went down 5 wrong paths, drove through the Atlantic ocean for a brief period, and drove down several railroad tracks.

4. Social media makes us less social.

Facebook and Twitter have made connecting with family and friends from across the globe easy. With the apps that are available you can have access to the entire world with just the press of a touch screen. How could this ever be bad?

With the ability to review, change, and then post what you want to say you never have to worry about saying the wrong thing. When we are put into a scenario with a face to face connection, we cannot simply hit “backspace” to change what we meant. It becomes intimidating and real connections can be easily lost.

5. Microwaves nuked our survival instincts.

There are so many theories and studies on how microwaves kill our brain cells from the radioactivity, but can using one actually kill our ability to cook?

With so many international weather induced disasters, most of us have experienced dealing with a power outage. With extended power outages, not many would know how to cook the food they have sitting in their fridge using their gas stoves or cooking over the open flame of a grill. Many people rely on canned food or fast-food stores that happen to be open at the time to avoid starvation.

With technology always being upgraded and readily available, it will be interesting to see where it takes us in the future. Technology itself is not bad – provided it is used in moderation and we do not forget the skills we would need for survival.

Before you use that Newegg coupon code for the next big piece of technology, make sure you will own the technology instead of the technology owning you.

About the Author:-

Vivien Lavely is a freelance writer and product marketing associate. Vivien’s hobbies are gaming, cooking, and travelling.

Do share your thoughts.


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