Technology and Us

“Don’t sit too close to the television; Your brain will rot and your eyes will fall out.”  I’m sure most of you have heard this at least once from your parents at some point in time. We would get scolded by our parents for sitting too close to the tv and now with cell phones, our eyes are glued to those screens a huge part of every day.  As technology advances, people are becoming more dependent on it.  Many depend on technology for the weather, news, directions, answers to curiosity and a myriad of other things. This reliance on technology warrants an examination of whether or not technology has an effect on our health.

Bekah Witten attacked this dilemma in three different ways in her article, “Technology’s Effect on Our Health: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” She started with making the point that technology is playing a role in our laziness. Witten asserts that laziness shouldn’t be technology’s fault because what we do with technology is solely up to us. “We make the decision every day whether or not we should research something new, take a walk, or watch Orange is the New Black.” (Witten)

People should start to take responsibility for their actions and not blame their laziness on technology. Lauren Lanna for example, explains in her article “Technology Does Not Make Our Generation Lazy” that having information at her finger tips gives her more time to spend on learning new things and that she still works hard at school and her job despite the times she goes on her phone during her breaks.  She didn’t utilize technology as a tool to avoid of the world around her, exemplifying that the effects of technology on laziness depend on how you go about using the it in your daily life.

Using one’s phone in one’s daily life does not make one lazy.  Cell phones are a tool we can all use to make our lives easier.  Technology makes completing tasks more convenient and less time consuming.  The time that it will save can be spent on going for walks, reading a book, playing a sport and/or spending time out with friends/family.  Yet, a great number of us will choose Netflix on our spare time rather than a walk.

Witten’s second attack on this statement is in terms of the impact screens have a negative impact on our eyes.  Our eyes were never developed to read small letters on small bright screens.  This discomfort is all due to our screen time

The Vision Council’s study on Digital Eye strain shows that screens do have an impact on our eyes.  In the study, 32.4 percent of American adults have reported experiencing eye strain, while 27.2 percent reported dry eyes after two or more hours of screen time.

Staring at a screen for too long can have other side effects such as headaches, blurred vision, and neck and shoulder pain.  In the Vision Council’s study, 27.7 percent of adults experienced headaches while another 27.9 percent of them experienced blurred vision.  Thirty five percent also reported neck and shoulder pain. This study makes it clear that because many people stare at a screen, they are suffering from physical discomfort.

The Vision Council also found that children are suffering from these physical discomforts as well as adults.  Almost 70 percent of American adults reported that their children spent more than two hours looking at the screens of a device per day.  Not only did this give those children physical discomfort, but it also reduced the attention span of 15.2 percent of those children and 13.5 percent experienced irritability. This study shows that early use of this technology can negatively affects a child’s development.

Many solutions, including wearing protective eyewear, have been suggested to solve these health concerns. This does not however, eliminate the fact that technology is affecting our health.   Witten highly recommends limiting your screen time and take breaks every now a then.  She suggests that people grab a book or go for a walk during breaks from screen time.

Witten’s last attack was different.  Unlike her other two arguments, her third attack is in favor of the use of technology. She does believe that technology has also provided us with some positive opportunities in terms of our health. Present day technology is capable of keeping track of our personal health and has even made it fun in some cases. There are now applications that reward you for the number of steps you take or even trigger a charitable donation for the number of miles you run.   Witten believes that “this technology positively impacts not only our health, but also our passions for meaningful causes.”

It all comes down to the different types of technology and how people go about using them. For instance, medical technology in the field of healthcare and medicine has advanced to a point where conjoined twin infants can safely be separated, whereas before the new technology this would not have been possible.  These technological advancements have helped many people around the world with their health conditions.

Technology doesn’t have to be too advanced to help us.  Something as simple as “Chatbots” guiding new mothers on how to take care of their newborn or learning to breastfeed for the first time is beneficial. The advancements and growing nature of technology has a positive effect on the healthcare of present and future humanity.

In terms of health, we, as conscious human beings, are responsible for how we use technology. If you sit in front of a computer for hours at a time or have your eyes glued to your phone every minute of the day, you face the risk of harming your health.

The negative effects can be avoided depending on how we go about using technology and the time it frees up in our daily lives.  We get to choose how long we spend on our computers or our phones and what to do with our free time.  Technology has made it easier for us to do many things and this ease has created valuable time— time that should be spent on personal goals.  The positive effects of technology on our health are up to our discretion.  The more we advance and develop technology, the better our surgeries can go, the more diseases can be cured, and the more lives can be saved.  How technology affects us is ultimately our choice.  We shouldn’t make use of excellent technology; we should make excellent use of technology.

 

Work Cited

• Lanna, Lauren. “Technology Does Not Make Our Generation Lazy.” The Odyssey Online, Odyssey, 30 Aug. 2017, www.theodysseyonline.com/technology-generation-lazy.
• Michen, Sandra. “Digital Eye Strain.” Digital Eye Strain | The Vision Council, 2018, www.thevisioncouncil.org/content/digital-eye-strain.
• Witten, Bekah. “Technology’s Effect on Our Health: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” Health IS Technology Blog, 26 June 2018, health.usf.edu/is/blog/2018/06/26/technologys-effect-on-our-health-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly.

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