Lily powersWRT 205

“The ugly”: My personal experience with technology addiction

Placing yourself in a very interactive location and observing individual’s social behaviors is the perfect way to examine this idea of technology creating a disconnected society and that is precisely what I did. Being raised in a home where constant use of technology was considered rude, I wanted to examine how other’s interactions with one another was interrupted by technology or even in some cases fully functioned through technology. On Tuesday March 31 I visited Starbucks on the corner of Marshall during the busy afternoon hour of 3:30. I sat down in the

corner with my notebook and pen, leaving all devices of technology completely out of reach to fully tune into the moment. Sitting directly at the table to my left there were 2 girls, coffees in hand, phones on the table, chatting away. 2 minutes into my observation I noticed the conversation became somewhat of an interview as one of the girls was talking while the other sipped and looked down at the table. Not to my surprise, the girl looking at the table was scrolling through her social media apps on her phone completely uninterested in what her friend had to tell

her. As she frantically waved her phone she then interrupted her friend to say, “my mom just sent me this picture of my dog and I’m going to Instagram it, look!!!”. She was so consumed by the virtual world happening inside her phone that she did not have the slightest interest in what her friend had to tell her. With a “cutsie” look on her face, her friend replied, “aw” and then began to pick up her phone and tell her friend the picture she had of her dog was so

Tone down the tech

Technology: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. An Informative Guide to Technology

want to miss any of the latest updates or not have access to entertainment during spare time or a boring situation, so we resort to technology. Constantly checking our phones and leaving them at arm’s length ensures that we are always kept in the loop and we are always given something to do or play with. We need to focus on what’s happening in the present moment or time and not be fixated

with what’s going on with someone else or somewhere else. It is so important that we stop this crazy obsession with technology and fully tune in because if we don’t move towards this change we might become socially disconnected to each other completely. We all may be sitting in Starbucks one day completely silent clicking away on our phones, texting each other cute pictures of

suggests that use of

Internet search

“Multitasking with

technology is

detrimental to

cognitive

performance”

In moderation…“A

2008 study

users physical and

mental withdrawal

symptoms”

“A 2011 study

showed that

unplugging from

technology for one

day gave some

Brain:

Technology On the

What technology moderation has done for me:

“By ‘turning off to tune in,’ I

feel like I have almost

captured time in a bottle,

that I have stopped the

frenetic pace of my life”

– Christine Organ

“Limiting my

technology usage has

enhanced my ability

to appreciate what is

going on around me!”

– Colleen Keith

“There were no text messages, no maps, no calls, no apps and no playlists to connect me to anyone or anything. For the first time in my adult life, I was untethered.”

–Ellen Huerta

And turn it into this…

Let’s take technology from this…

A disconnected,

addicted, society…

A happier and healthier

society that is more

socially connected