Essay: Technology is the poison to our existence

Nature vs. Nurture is a theory of psychological debate describing the variables associated to the development of person from birth to maturity. Put simplistically, nature is a term encompassing the genetic variables associated with what makes a person who they are. From my point of view, nurture plays a more impactful role on explaining our individuality. I believe that people develop as a result of their individual learning experiences that they then unwillingly incorporate into their schemas of the world around them. When discussing human development through nurture, the environmental factors and influences are what contribute to the way we socialize, behave, think, and act in our everyday lives. Of major concern to my argument, is the environmental factor of The Digital Age and its influences on our learning and development. Technology and its creation comes with many benefits that have been very important to our history, but subjectively speaking, it is the poison to our existence.
Technology has been an essential part of our lives since the beginning of time. Whether it may be the creation of fire, time, or the computer,  society finds a way to exploit and utilize the new technology’s that are invented. As a result, we internalize these technological advancements into our everyday lives until they become the new normal while the old normal is forgotten. Although certain technologies could be deemed necessary to our survival, I believe that others have developed too far for us to be able to handle. Many windows open as technology has developed to where it is in the digital age. These windows provide us with many helpful benefits that can be applied to many areas of everyday life. With the excitement and rapidity that the internet brings, dependence develops similarly to the dependence developed to an addictive drug. Like the “Cycle of Compulsion”, touched on in “Addicted to distraction”, the drug, or technology in this case, becomes a source of stimulation. Human beings are pleasure sensing creatures. That being said, this stimulation can lead to addictive behavior. After it becomes habitual to use the internet over to not use the internet, life wraps itself around which progresses the extent of that use as relying on technology at all becomes acceptable. The way we communicate and use our brains is now ultimately dominated by the internet and the norms it places on the culture using it. Everyone is plugged in; its the social norm. Some may not see issue in this but that may just be because the effects of this addition are not as detectable as the effects of drug addiction.
The most visible way that psychology is poisoning human develop is  how the availabilities provided by the internet affects our social connectedness. The more time spent online, the less time that can be spent interacting with others. Addiction can be defined as, according to “Addicted to distraction”, the relentless pull to a substance or an activity that becomes so compulsive it ultimately interferes with everyday life.” According to that definition, the use of the internet can definitely be seen as a form of addiction. The relentless pull to use the internet, or for example constantly refreshing a Facebook feed, interferes with human interaction and the benefits that stem from it. As seen in my essay on the road earlier this year, human interaction is extremely important. It impacts the way we view ourselves and the world around us. According to 4 “Kraut and colleagues found that heavy Internet use increased social connectedness, but only in those with strong social support. In their study, heavy Internet users with poor social support had worse social connectedness.” Considering that, how are children suppose to develop a social support system in general when entering an already technology heavy society? This impacts the social development of a child altogether. The way we communicate with our family and peers has vastly changed with the Digital Age. Face to face interaction is more rare as technology reduces the need for certain interactions. Relationships can be maintained online although I believe this to be massively unproductive. When communicating over text, the recipient only receives the information that the sender wants them to see. When communicating in person, reactions and emotions can also be taken in as information leading to more successful discussions and the development of an emotional intelligence. As a result of the reduction of interactions, we spend less time learning the social skills necessary to developing successful off-line relationships. The verbal skills needed to communicate effectively are thus massively underdeveloped. For example, most disagreements and arguments are now more likely to be seen as getting handled over text instead of communicating face to face. Although successful from time to time, this method of settling a disagreement prevents the development of skills needed in a real life verbal disagreement or discussion for important circumstances that would be beneficial to have for later in life.
Not only is our development being poisoned on a social level but on a cognitive level as well. Technology is capable of adding an extension to our brain making it more powerful then ever before. According to “our brains extended”, it can even be seen as a “part of mental activity.” This means that it has become so relied on that it becomes a part of who we are. Being able to have this extension of your brain takes the pressure off having to remember everything thus the brain becomes less reliant on itself. It provides people with knowing that they don’t need to have certain things in their common knowledge because it’s as simple as looking it up. This changes the way information is processed and prioritized in the brain. Learning becomes less focused on the information itself and more on where to find the information 3. This ultimately changes the way we use our brain. Before the internet, we may have had to train our brains to acquire information in a more tedious fashion by working certain parts of our brains that technology has now replaced. Our brain isn’t used to this extent anymore as the need to retain as much information as before technology was invented becomes unnecessary.  The internet acts as an external hard-drive that takes the need out of storing semantic information into the memory. Having information as accessible as it is nowadays changes the way we read, process information and build our knowledge because it makes the information feel less important knowing that it is just a few clicks away. As technology is relied on more, our brains are relied on less leading to lower levels of functioning. Certain critical functions of our brain that are developed through the working of the information processing system without technology may not isn’t a factor  are never maintained.  and certain parts of our brain aren’t needed for use animo
The way technology is capable of warping behavior to revolve around its usage has many negative effects on our development. As discussed above, it affects our behavior on a social level but it also can have affects on an individual level. Being massively additive, technology may even lead to insomnia and problems with sleep. The addictive cycle of compulsion that technology creates drives obsessive behavior. The need to remain updated to the latest posts and news online leads to the compulsive unnecessary refreshing of feeds. This behavior may become so time consuming that it can disrupt our patterns of sleep. According to a study done on Turkish students 1, the more use of the internet during the day is linked to the more difficult of falling asleep at night. Instead of falling right to sleep, our technology driven obsession forces our brains to be unable to fall asleep at night until we satisfy the obsession with the compulsive behavior. In turn, we spend more time awake satisfying our addictions and less on biological necessities such as sleep. Even after we satisfy the obsession, that use before bedtime may also contribute to the difficulty of falling asleep at night because of the rewarding and stimulating nature technology has. When the internet is used right before a person tries to fall asleep, the rapid flow of constant information on our screens to our brains arouses our senses and triggers the flow of thought. Thus the more time the brain must spend in the NREM stages of sleep. As the brain transcends through the stages of sleep before being able to reach the deepest level of sleep, REM sleep, the brain must filters out all the information received throughout the day in order to separate and store important information from non-important information. With the amount of information fed into our brains via technology, the more that must be sorted.  Also, the blue light emitted by our phone screens is powerful enough to affect the production of the sleep hormone, melatonin, that assists us in falling asleep. This then alters the users circadian rhythm and shifts the cycle of the release of melatonin. Levels of melatonin have been linked to psychological disorders such as depression, schizophrenia, and Bi-polar disorder. Sleep is a vital part of human development. According to the restorative theory of psychology, “Sleep is necessary to the physical health of the body” 15. During the time of sleep,  growth hormones are released to the highest potential and the bodily chemicals that are depleted throughout the day are restored. Also, sleep increases brain plasticity and most cellular repair occurs during this time. Thus, brain and body development is majorly impacted in a negative way when our quality of sleep is reduced as a result of Internet usage.