The year two thousand marked the end of one generation and the birth of another. This new generation would soon be given the name Digital Natives, because they would the first to grow up using devices like smartphones and laptops, never knowing a time before internet. Naming a generation after technological advancement shows how important technology is to us. We use technology to communicate, learn, and upload photos of our frappuccinos to Instagram. Our growing reliance on technology has become a fascination to many and a fear to some. Will it distract us from what is happening around us? Will it make us more informed, or filter out important information? Will it open world of new …show more content…
A student writing a paper feels their phone buzz and pulls it out to check a text. A couple dining in a restaurant turns their attention away from each other and towards one of the many TVs positioned around the room. Smartphones in particular have become nearly omnipresent and have had a great impact on how people interact with the world around them. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, there are about 660,000 people using cell phones at any given moment while driving. This statistic shows just how attached we have become to our cell phones. It seems we cannot put them down even when we know the use of them is dangerous. Our advances in technology have also impacted how we interact with the world around us. We communicate can through calls, texts, and emails, and we rely on Google to answer all our questions. In the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, he examines how using Google is affecting our cognitive process. “We are allowing google and the internet to select for us what information we take in” (Carr). Before there was Google, we were more reliant on our own logic and observations of the world. He says that now, any time we have a question we can search it online and get the answers that Google thinks we would want (Carr). Allowing Google to filter our information intake can cause us to miss important pieces knowledge and can make us unaware of important events happening in the world around