Can you remember a single day when you spent quality time without knowing where your phone was? Can you remember when was the last new place you visited and reached there without taking the help from GPS? Most of us don’t. That has become the reality of our lives. Technology has made our lives so much easier and dependent that we sometimes don’t even realise that we are using a technology while performing some work. They are integrated into our lives and have made us so much more productive. While technology has its own benefits, there are some repercussions that come with it which we fail to realise.
Humans were made intelligent and have had the brains to perform work that no other living being could. They discovered and continued to innovate technology. The evolution in technology has been huge, and it has only grown and advanced with years. Who would have thought that a mechanical device would be able to walk and perform your work for you some years ago! Robots and Artificial Intelligence have only grown with years, and special AI programs have been introduced in schools to make children more equipped with technology. Technology is being used to fight the pandemic which has left lives uncertain. The test kits we use, the ventilators and treatment we use, all are a product of technology. Drones were deployed by officials in many areas to ensure that people were following the lockdown. Robots were used in hospitals to deliver non-medical needs to patients of Covid-19. Apps like the Aarogya Setu app have been used to form a surveillance system and track patients and people coming in contact with them. This technology has helped humans fight the pandemic and should be used to the fullest to cope up with the pandemic.
Using technology to make work easier and be more productive has been the motive behind every technology ever innovated. But the fact that it is not being used for the right purposes is something that has left scientists around the world worried. Ever since the inception of Internet, we have only seen an increase in the cyber crimes with increasing accessibility to the internet. Internet is free, mostly unregulated and allows you to have access to almost everything is the most useful, at the same time being the most dangerous.
Our dependency on technology has increased over the years. While it has made our lives easier, it has brought with it some serious problems to our lives. A major reason behind anxiety, stress and depression in teenagers have found its roots to social media. It has also developed a sense of insecurity about yourself and you tend to start comparing yourselves to others. We often find others having better life than us. Many of us pretend to be cool on social media even if we are dealing with our own problems in real life. There are a lot of advantages of social media- you can connect to anyone, you can share your feelings, you can feel better in a second by looking at memes- to name a few. But what it has also brought with it is anxiety and inferiority complex, which must be handled in the correct way.
The dependence on technology has also made us lazy and sometimes, super unproductive. We often depend on technology for most of our work rather than doing it ourselves. The dependency on technology has affected our mental health, our cognitive capabilities and has also halted the future of innovation. What we need to find is a balance in order to control our lives according to us and not according to technology.
This balance would require us to use technology to the extent that it only benefits us and not harm us in any way. This can come with limiting the time we spend on technology and limiting our use. We should use our intellect and cognitive capabilities before turning to a machine to help us. We need to work along with technology to improve our work and help us grow. We can use internet to grow our knowledge and improve skills at the same time, having fun and using it as a source of entertainment. Technology started to evolve during the industrial evolution in 1970s and since then only evolved to grow bigger and better. We live in a digital age now, where all our work is technology dependent in some or the other way. Our ways of entertainment changed after technology. What used to be limited to circus and play, has now expanded to movies, TV shows and Netflix and chill. There are tons of entertainment options even while staying at home during quarantine. Not only can we entertain ourselves, we can learn skills and train ourselves for new things using technology. Technology has slowly taken away the need to interact physically with others. Humans need to interact with others. But since the advent of technology, this physical interaction has reduced to a great extent. We know thousands on social media but end up knowing none of them in real life. This has helped many to interact with others, have long distance communication and know people while exposing them to a lot security and privacy risks. We need to know and have control of our daily usage. Addiction to mobile phones is quite common these days and the sad part is, we don’t even realise that it’s a problem. Also, growing up with technology limits our creativity and imagination to things we see and do online. Inculcating creativity into our daily activities sharpens our brain and helps us to be more productive in whatever work we do. There has to a balance; technology has to be used to fulfil our needs and make our lives easier. But its use should be limited to helping us and not controlling us. Making the best use of technology for our own good is what will take this world forward. -Aarushi Batra