Electronics invade teen life

Written by Simrundeep Kaur

You wake up in the morning and check your phone for text messages and voice mails. Then maybe you turn on the computer to glance at your Facebook and e-mail. After school you’ll probably find yourself in front of a TV or a computer. As you grudgingly begin your homework, you hook up your headphones into your iPod and amp up the volume.

Addicted much? Technology may be a necessity, but it is also distracting. We have become so dependent on it that we were bound to become addicted.

This addiction has fed society’s desire for constant advancement. Every few months, innovators release something new, something everyone wants and something everyone thinks they need.

Take the iPod for example. Ever since its initial release in 2001, the device has undergone numerous makeovers. There are now 23 different versions of the various models: “classic”, “mini”, “nano”, “shuffle” and “touch”. Now, after only a short amount of time, Apple has even developed the iPod Touch and the iPhone with a heat-sensitive screen. People can easily access the Internet from these two devices, as well as thousands of available applications.

The snail-mail days are almost nonexistent now. With e-mails and text messages, who needs letters? We can relay a message to someone in the blink of an eye. When snail mail was the primary form of communication, it would take at least three days for someone to receive a letter. Now it is rare to get a card or letter from a loved one.

In addition, computers have gotten progressively thinner and smaller. Macintosh’s elementary days are long gone. Now we have come to enjoy things like the Mac Book Pro. Better yet, everything on a computer can now be found on cell phones, which are even smaller than even today’s computers. It makes one wonder what will be invented next.

How many teachers still use overhead projectors for everyday lessons? We have ceiling projectors that connect directly to computers.

Map books, too, have undergone a change. No one consults them anymore. Everything is online: the map, the estimated travel distance, the estimated time of travel and even shortcuts.

Anything and everything can be found on a computer now; the Internet is a beautiful thing.

Nonetheless, the addiction remains, and grows stronger as each day goes by. How bad will it get? A day without any technology would be an interesting one indeed.