“The fact or condition of being addicted to a particular substance, thing, or activity” (New Oxford American Dictionary). Like the addiction generated by a drug, the technology could affect us in a psychological way because when a person becomes addicted to it, the absence could cause anxiety and even depression. Children grow and change interests in the blink of an eye. Without realizing it, one day we discovered that the teddy bear that used to accompany our child on fearsome and dark nights was replaced by his cell phone. Currently, 84% of teenagers sleep with their cell phone in bed. Anyone would believe that cell phones have become a kind of extension of the body. Telephones operate as a multipurpose center that not only keeps them connected 24 hours a day, but also allows them to take photos, videos, listen to music, watch shows, and get all the information they need. This does not only affect kids of young age any person with sublime lack of focus gets affect by this. Technology is an advancement that has brought so many improvements in our life that had to brought the dark side of it, which is addiction, and addiction can be consider a disease because the addiction can cause for example in cigars it can cause lung cancer but in technology can cause isolation, people with long term of lacking social experiences and friendship can cause a huge impact in the future. Not only socially it also can affect your mental health such as lack of sleep that may cause fatigue and stress.
Did you ever try to take the phone from a teenager? For many young people – and adults – the use of cell phones has become another addiction. The lack of this can trigger reactions similar to those produced by the lack of drugs or alcohol. A study conducted by the Daegu Catholic University in South Korea found that adolescents who used their cell phones constantly had behaviors similar to those of addicted people, such as aggression, depression, isolation, agitation, and difficulty concentrating and maintaining attention.
Video games can also make a person addicted to an electronic device, most people play video games for fun or just to hang out, but many end up becoming addicted to a particular game or video games as such. The challenge, the emotion and the ability we have to use the imagination to be in front of one of these video games, make them one of the key elements that make fun for a human being. According to another survey conducted 41% of people play when they are bored, but 55% say they always play actively to relieve tension and relax. As I already know, everything in excess is bad, just as video games have both positive and negative effects. Thanks to video games we can enhance our mental ability, open a field of creativity, empower social communication and help relieve stress. But as I said the addiction to video games could generate negative effects that are: Alteration of behavior, failure in terms of education and isolation of society. It has even been shown how technology damages the eyes of people.
A research done by CYBERPSYCHOLOGY & BEHAVIOR called “Does Instant Messaging Affect College Students’ Performance on a Concurrent Reading Comprehension Task?” resulted in the conclusion that
“Given this unexpected finding, that self-reported IM use was negatively related to cognitive performance, we con- ducted an exploratory analysis using another measure of cognitive performance: grade point average. Participants who reported lower GPAs were more likely to also report spending more time per day on IM (0.23, t (68) 1.97, p 0.05). Thus, there was a negative association be- tween IM use and two independent self-report measures of cognitive performance.” (52).
This is evidential proof that technology can facilitate the study for college students but can also bring disadvantages when over use, meaning when spend x amount of time may affect your final grade, because it doesn’t matter how easier does technology makes it you are still in control of how you use your time and when you don’t get time of sleep is very common to conduce to a bad result in grades, fatigue and stress, which is one of the most common cause that attacks heart attacks. On a young age heart attack are not common but commonly use in college students are energetic drinks and Adderall and when you combine does, and this situation is frequent heart attacks on that age is not a surprise for doctors.
Another study brought by the Journal of America College Health indicated that “Participants completed the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal after either 24 hours of sleep deprivation or approximately 8 hours of sleep. After completing the cognitive task, the participants completed 2 questionnaires, one assessing self-reported effort, concentration, and estimated performance, the other assessing off-task cognitions. As expected, sleep-deprived participants performed significantly worse than the non- deprived participants on the cognitive task. However, the sleep-deprived participants rated their concentration and effort higher than the non-deprived participants did. In addition, the sleep-deprived participants rated their estimated performance significantly higher than the non-deprived participants did. The findings indicate that college students are not aware of the extent to which sleep deprivation negatively affects their ability to complete cognitive tasks.”
Is safe to assume that technology conduce lack of sleep, stress, but I believe in a scholar environment that happens when people don’t organize themselves to do assignments with time and just decide to do activities such as socialize or just even use the technology for other entertainment purpose. With this been stated what is safe to state is that people’s behavior leads to the effects of addiction you are not forced to use technology for more than 3 hours a day we choose if we want what college students terminology is an “all nighter” which means spend the whole night doing homework, basically do what you could have done spent like at least 1 hour a day for 5 days, do 5 hours in just one night which actually its worse like proven in the first research, people who deprive from sleep, lack of concentration, and it feels like you are actually doing it right but you are not complete focus so in your current thoughts it feels right, but after you may notice in works that even myself I have seen myself, works that I remember finishing on time pulling an all nighter thinking that I finally finished it and published it. After revising it myself couldn’t understand what I was trying to affirm in some points.
Lack of sleep is a significant hidden factor in the decline in performance among school-age youth, according to research carried out internationally. The problem is particularly important in rich countries. Experts in the field link the lack of sleep to the increase in the use of cell phones and computers in the dorms late at night. The lack of sleep is such a serious problem that school education has had to reduce its difficulty in accommodating students with sleep problems, the study indicates. The international comparison of data carried out by Boston College found that the United States has the highest number of students with lack of sleep. 73% of the students of 9 and 10 years of age and 80% of students of 13 and 14 years were identified by their teachers as very affected. In reading tests, 76% of students aged 9 and 10 had the same problem of sleep deprivation. The data was much higher than the international average of 47% in elementary students and 57% in the secondary group.
What the study does not show very clearly is why young people are not sleeping well or why countries with important technological advances seem to have the biggest problems.
However, sleep experts point to technology in children's bedrooms as one of the reasons, especially the use of smartphones or laptops late at night. Not only do young people stay awake by sending messages to their friends using the internet. The light from the screens very close to the face physically interrupts the natural scenario for the dream. "Having a computer screen that is barely eight inches from your face exposes you too much lighter than watching a television on the other side of the room," says Karrie Fitzpatrick, sleep researcher at Northwestern University in Illinois. "That's going to tell your brain to keep you awake," says Fitzpatrick.
"That light can reprogram the whole circadian rhythm system and say, 'wait a minute, it's not time to go to bed'." Lack of sleep is also a serious physical barrier to learning. "Lack of sleep is a problem at all levels that is relevant in learning, memory and academic performance," says Derk-Jan Dijk, director of the Sleep Study Center at the University of Surrey, in the UK. Investigations into sleep disorders and brain functions have shown the importance of sleep in memory and the consolidation of information. Without sleep, the brain has trouble absorbing and retaining ideas.
"There is a growing interest in the association between adequate sleep and academic performance," says Dijk. For his part Fitzpatrick points out that lack of sleep will leave young students more emotionally volatile, with less ability to concentrate and physically problematic when it comes to learning. He adds that loss of sleep and efforts to recover it in the short term can cause more complex interruptions in the way the brain stores information. But there is good news. If you start to sleep well on a daily basis, the lack of learning is reversed. "As long as you do not get to an extreme sleep deprivation and return to a seven to nine-hour sleep at night and as long as there is no permanent damage you can probably restore the functionality of accumulating, processing and collecting memory," says Fitzpatrick. "The bases of learning will surely return to normal levels." Otherwise, trying to study without sleep will be very difficult. "Your brain works empty."