Damaging Young Minds with Modern Technology

Damaging Young Minds with Modern Technology

“The problem is similar to an eating disorder, says Dr. Kimberly Young, a professor at St. Bonaventure University in New York who has led research on the addictive nature of online technology” (“An Ugly Toll of Technology: Impatience and Forgetfulness” by Tara Parker-Pope). An addiction to technology is very serious and dangerous to children that start to spend a vast amount of time online at a young age. Society today spends an abundance of time on devices, and studies have suggested that excessive dependence on cell phones and the Internet is similar to an addiction. In today’s world, technology is a significant part of people’s lives; it is in their schools, jobs, and at houses. Articles have proven that technology is affecting brains: “How does technology affect our brains” by Andi Horvath, “An Ugly Toll of Technology: Impatience and Forgetfulness” by Tara Parker-Pope, “The Internet May Be Changing Your Brain In Ways You’ve Never Imagined by Carolyn Gregoire, and “How Technology is Changing the Way Children Think and Focus” by Jim Taylor, Ph.D., Attention, memory, and the way that people think or do are aspects that technology is affecting the population’s brains.

One effect on the brain that is influenced by technology is the loss of focus and short attention span of people. Attention is the foundation of learning for children at a young age, and most learning is based off of how well the student can focus. Successful people need focus and attention to get to where they need to be and to work to their fullest. Regardless, society has continued to damage this aspect with mass amounts of technology with the youth. Technology has become more of a distraction to people all day as they are constantly thinking of social media or their cell phones. Now, it is harder to sustain attention or focus for a long period of time; this is caused solely by the exposure to technology for most of the day. With technology, people’s brains direct their attention to different things than the past generations have learned. Jim Taylor, Ph.D., states, “The advent of television altered that attention by offering children visual stimuli, fragmented attention, and little need for imagination.” New technology offers many distractions and aids that fill minds and remove the need to focus for a long time on the devices. Deep thoughts and conversations with family and friends are being compromised because of the lack of attentiveness in the brains of millennials. Attention and focus is being affected by modern technology today.

Another effect of technology on the brain is a very important piece of people’s lives: memory. As reported by Carolyn Gregoire, “Research has found that millennials are even more forgetful than seniors.” Technology is impairing the memories of young children that are exposed to major amounts of screen time. Additionally, schools are adjusting to modern times and replacing books with computers. Teenagers and children in school rely on technology to remember information for them. “We are in an era where we have outsourced our memory to Google, GPS, calendar alerts and calculators. But perhaps it’s not about remembering the facts you have and more about how you use the information that matters” (Horvath). With all the stimuli from technology staring at you, it is hard to make new memories in place of the old, unnecessary ones. More meaningful memories have a greater importance on people's brains; however, people tend to forget the valuable memories because of the minors details in the way. As