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Computers and technology have become a huge role in the educational society today. It is extremely rare that a teacher will receive a math assignment back from a student that completed it without the use of a calculator or a paper without the aid of a computer. Not only is it the students whose work benefits from technology, but teachers, along with almost every person in the world with a task that needs to be completed, does so with the help from some type of technology.

When it comes to technology in the classroom, there are definitely more beneficial factors accessible now that we did not have before. For example, it is now easier for students to give presentations and doing papers. There are so many ways to get access to different databases and articles with the use of the internet rather than having to read through a number of books to find useful sources. The same goes for teachers when giving lectures, instead of basing their classes off of just a single text book, they are now capable of gaining information from the web. For both students and teachers, it now takes much less effort to give presentations. With the use of word and power points, we are able to take and receive notes by simply emailing or sharing a google document. On power points, teachers are able to use charts, tables, video clips, images, and even more to visually explain different topics being lectured. Teachers are also able to use electronic discussions outside of class. This is typically directed towards the shyer students that do not like to speak out loud in front of class. It gives them to opportunity to chat online and earn better grades for class participation. At almost every college or university around the world, students are given a school e-mail, which is how professor’s get in contact with them and where they receive all important updates every day. Technology is used in the process of simply applying to colleges. Many schools have their applications online, so if you do not have access to a computer you would need to find somewhere to access one. It is incredible to think how much things have changed over time and how big of role technology plays in our everyday lives. But a commonly asked question today is if as whole, is the fact that technology is making simple tasks easier to complete, overall going to benefit society or make us suffer from it?

Over time, the internet has driven the world to a downfall in normal social behaviors. Without books and face to face interaction children are likely to lack social skills. A lot of people are looking at the beneficial side of technology use in education and not the negative aspects. Children that are more often using smartphones or tablets are more likely to not be able to understand other people’s emotions. A study was done by psychologists with two sets of sixth graders in a camp that does not allow students to use electronic devices (Wolpert, In Our Digital World, Are Young People Losing the Ability to Read Emotions). At the end of the study, the students were going to be asked to identify different people’s emotions in different photos. At the end of the study, the students who were at the camp surpassed the students who were not there, in reading emotions. It is obvious that as humans, we are not capable of learning how to read emotions through face to face communication the same way as trying to learn it from a screen in front of us. Due to this, it is extremely likely to lack in social skills. From this study, it was learned that even using technology to interact, we are spending less time learning how to read nonverbal cues. Uhls stated that, “We are social creatures. We need device-free time.”

Without technology, many people would not know how to live their everyday lives. In a very short amount of time, the internet has changed a ton of human experiences. For example, a few years ago if we missed an episode of a television show, we would have to wait for it to come on again. If we wanted to communicate with people that were long distance, we would have to write them letters. In both of these situations today we are able to simply record the show that we want to watch or send an email or text to that person we want to get in contact with. The internet also gives us much less time to be away from people and have alone time. Due to social media, even when we are physically alone, we are able to always be in communication with others if we want. It feels that our world today is almost entirely being created into technology. Things like shopping, work, taxes, reading and more can all be done over the internet. All of these things that we now have access to does make some tasks simpler, however, is having contact with everything going on in the world at all times always a good thing to have? This answer would probably be no for most people. Because we have such easy access to communication with others, people tend to spend way too much time on their devices. For example, a lot of people miss out on entire conversations and have no idea what is being talked about because they were too busy on their phones.

Not only are we lacking social skills due to technology, but the internet can also be very dangerous. With the ability to store information on our clouds, we could have no idea a someone was hacking into our things or not. Also, if you happen to lose your phone, someone is capable of finding out where you live, go to school, who your parents are, and way more. The internet can be very dangerous and we must be careful with what we post because even if we click “delete” on something, it is still never completely erased.

Although there are many beneficial factors that technology has today, it is overall becoming a negative aspect on society. With such a lack of social skills and continuing advancements in our devices, things like this are just going to become worse with each generation. So instead of people online looking at the pros of these new technological advancements, we need to take a look at the negative aspects as well.

See Model Works Cited for Formatting

http://www.teenink.com/nonfiction/academic/article/482544/Negative-Effects-of-Technology-on-Society/
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/075125.html
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/in-our-digital-world-are-young-people-losing-the-ability-to-read-emotions