Humans continue to develop ideas that create technological advancements continue to progressively solve problems that come up. This technology has helped by not only shaping the industrial, agricultural, or defense innovations but it also affects the educational aspects of our everyday lives. It constantly increases the limited knowledge that we once had and is making it into an ever-expanding space of knowledge. The average IQ of humans living in the past few centuries was said to have been seventy People with this score on an IQ test would be described as being retarded but that was not the case of our ancestors, not having “Siri” was the problem. Now the average IQ of the human race has risen to a hundred and thirty because of technology. The Interconnection of all these networks and access to the internet has presumably made everything easier.
On the other hand, the negative effects of technology have had a monstrous impact on human intellect. Most of us right now have felt an urge to check our schedule or to find that who just recently like our post on Instagram. Some people can not remember their way back home without using Google Maps; Some others can not even watch a full thirty-minute video without flinching or changing the documentary to watch cute kitten videos. It has trapped us in its very existence that we can not function without it. Nowadays, taking smartphone away from teenagers will leave them stranded and completely useless. Our knowledge banks stop growing and we begin to doubt what we know because we saw the opposite when we searched it.
Imagine a scenario where Danny has a final on Thursday, he decides to do some of his reading online, After a few minutes of scrolling through the website he mistakenly clicks on some Nike ad, a few hours later Danny realizes that he has been distracted by window shopping and has such little time left to study and ends up failing his Finals. This is a regular problem that almost everyone living in this decade has faced. Although it allows easy access to information, it has created a distorted and distracting style of reading. Nicolas Carr, the author of the book, The Shallows: How Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remeber says that “It may appear as a technology to help us find information we need and increasingly to connect with others but, it functions as an engine of distraction, geared up not to help us find what we need to know or maintain a train of thought, but to distract, dissipate, and frustrate us”(Carr, 2010). It ruins our ability to think and retain information and strengthens our shallow, naive way of thought.
Another effect of technology is that it kills our brain cells. World Health Organization released a statement on the effect of long term radiation on the human brain. They state that smartphones emit some radio waves that create carcinogenic cells in our heads, that end up destroying brain tissue. ( I can’t afford to lose any more of those).
A study carried out by Hartley Stephen of Harvard University found out that the brain releases a chemical called dopamine, which gives that feeling of pleasure, is what a drug addict feels when he has gotten his daily dose of that hard drug, is also the same chemical released when we use our phones. The addictive nature of the smartphone tricks our brain to believe that it is the only source of joy. Reduction in a normal face to face conversations between people has been replaced by Face time, Whatsapp video calls and the rest. People hardly relate with others and identifying emotions has become hard. Laziness has increased because we can now easily have meals delivered to our doorsteps.
Technology is neither good nor evil, the advancements in technology, the release of new iPhones, apps or software do not make us smarter nor does it make us dumber, It is a powerful tool that our generation is privileged to have and its impact either positive or negative is determined by how we use it so, “Is technology making you smarter or dumber”.
