Special Content: What does your relationship with technology look like?

Goldfish & Technology

Our world is covered head to toe with technology. Some are beneficial and sometimes life-saving, while others are for pure entertainment. According to Statista, 36% of the world's population in 2019 is projected to own a smartphone. With these connectable devices come an influx of data from the internet, as well as a social status that keeps us in the know. These devices can also be a curse to be reckoned with if not taken seriously. Technology can negatively impact our ability to be social humans through our daily habits, our overall health, and our ability to connect and relate to society around us. Let's look further to why these mini-computers in our pockets can ultimately lead to the loss of our human touch.

Three psychologists from the Department of Psychology at Temple University claimed, “While smartphones and related mobile technologies are recognized as flexible and powerful tools that, when used prudently, can augment human cognition, there is also a growing perception that habitual involvement with these devices may have a negative and lasting impact on users’ ability to think, remember, pay attention, and regulate emotion” (Hilmer 1).  In a recent study from Microsoft Corp, they found that people lose focus and concentration at around eight seconds. We, as social human beings now have a shorter attention span to that of a goldfish, which is nine seconds. What causes this sudden decrease in focus among our generation? Technology. Smartphones in general. The first thing most of us do before we go to bed at night and when we get up is check our phones. Our lives are completely consumed and revolve around our phones. From Instagram, Twitter, alarms, news, emails, the internet, and texting, our whole day revolves around the aspect of responding to other peoples priorities instead of our own. Technology has inadvertently caused us to lose the ability to connect with other people face to face and this is caused by our daily habits formed around our technology.

There are alternatives to living a life in which technology controls your day. Sure, we need to answer important emails, text message, phone calls, etc. But to what extent do these actions impede in our lives and in our families. Employees from Google and the lead creators of Youtube and Gmail, give us a resource in the form of a book titled, Make Time, which gives us 86 different ways to utilize technology in a way to help us and not hinder us. Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky, the authors of Make Time, explain how they designed Youtube and Gmail in a way that maintains your focus in what they call an infinity loop. An infinity loop is anything that you can refresh and keeps your attention. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube are wonderful examples of an infinity loop. We can easily lose track of hours of our lives in these social media platforms. Jake and John give us ways to make daily habits away from technology but also maintaining what is important and required for our work. These men are creators of two platforms that millions around the world use daily and they are stressing the importance of how they have to hinder the use of technology to be successful and productive each day.

Our habits have incremental importance on what we do each and every day. Within these habits can form worsening health problems for those who interact excessively with technology. Frequent uses to overuse of technology in our lives can lead to loss of eyesight, a strain on the head, neck, and back. It can also lead to obesity and other diseases like depression and ADHD. But these diseases stem from an underlying problem as stated by experts at the UCLA. “Perhaps the most dramatic impact is the reduction in the amount of sleep,” the chancellor said. Fifty years ago, the average adult got eight and a half hours of sleep; now we average less than seven hours a night, he explained. Bright light reduces levels of the hormone melatonin, which regulates sleep, and decreases leptin, which makes you feel full. At the same time, bright light increases ghrelin, which makes you feel hungry” (UCLA 2). Adolescence and addicted adults can suffer from a loss of sleep to the effects of technology, therefore, increasing the likelihood of obesity. ADHD is also an academic epidemic that millions of kids get diagnosed with because of their addiction to video games and technology in their lives. The amazing revelation is that all of these diagnosed children are most likely being diagnosed because of their lack of attention as stated above about the goldfish. This stems from the addition to technology.  Don’t misunderstand me, technology has helped advance our world in measures beyond compare, but the entertainment and social aspect that technology is now using is the underlying problem that is hindering our ability to remain healthy and fully human. Technology as perceived as an entertainment basis and social influence had caused many of the world’s population that participates to become obese, fall into a depression, suffer from ADHD, and lose precious sleep that is viable in the growth and functionality of our human race.

Greenfield, a distinguished professor of psychology and director of the UCLA Children’s Digital Media Center, was most concerned about the social costs of our obsession with digital technology. She cited a recent study conducted by her center that found that sixth graders’ ability to read emotions from nonverbal cues improved significantly in just five days when they went to a camp that focused on face-to-face interactions. She also pointed to another of their studies that found that college students felt most “bonded” to their friends when they talked face to face, and most distant from them when they text-messaged. And, yet, of course, these students still most often communicated by text (UCLA, 2). The APA (American Psychological Association) stated, “Generally, strong personal ties are supported by physical proximity. The Internet potentially reduces the importance of physical proximity in creating and maintaining networks of strong social ties. Unlike face-to-face interaction or even the telephone, the Internet offers opportunities for social interaction that do not depend on the distance between parties (Kraut 3).  We are designed for relationships, to be transformational instead of transactional. The last statement can be looked at from multiple angles, one angle is that the internet is a great resource that keeps us updated on people who we have come into contact with in the past. It keeps us connected to those far away, wonderful. I completely agree, grandparents and friends thousands of miles away, the internet would be great to check up on their lives. The causal approach shown from the research and studies done is what happens when we abuse the internet and almost all people abuse the internet in some way. When we begin to consistently check our phones hours in the day we lose precious moments in our life because we are caught up in the moments of other people who aren’t physically with us. Our ability to interact with other people is the main factor that will propel us forward in life. If you can’t communicate you will not survive in our day in age. Since the dawn of time, human beings have had a signature touch on all that we do if that’s what you want to call it. Are we losing our touch?

In 2012, scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that the brain chemicals of people who habitually used the Internet (and were perhaps addicted to it) had abnormal connections between the nerve fibers in their brain. These changes are similar to other sorts of addicts, including alcoholics (Morris 1). People tend to change very slowly and technology tends to change fast. In our microwave society, we no longer have to experience the process of obtaining something, There are apps for single individuals to shop for a partner and if they don’t like one they can look through a catalog to find someone else, and all of this is over a phone so there is no personal accountability. There are rarely people who go out and get to know a person before they start to date. You may say that is what older people do, or did. Our age is expanding and evolving, that can be understood, we do not have to do the things that people did decades ago. What can be a problem is an effect that social media has on us as social humans can hinder our ability to connect. We lose connections in our marriages, children, occupation, and social life because everything is already done for us. We are losing our human touch because of the relationship between technology and our human minds.

Through the evidence, we see the relationship that technology has on our daily habits, our overall health, and our ability to connect as social humans. Because we fail to acknowledge this relationship we failed to realize this problem in every one of our lives. There are multiple ways that we can halt our progress in technology to make progress in our relationships with people around us. If we can control this onslaught of technology coming to our fingertips we can become more productive, feel healthier, and live happier lives filled with people we know and care deeply about. What relationship do you have with technology? Are you already ensnared in its trap? Do you want an attention span longer than a goldfish? It starts with your daily habits and eventually ends with how you delay instant gratification for life long relationships.