Is Technology Driving Us Crazy?

Whilst I was surfing on the internet, I found an article from the Age newspaper in Australia called Log in, tune out: is technology driving us crazy? and it got me thinking.

As a "digital native", I have lived my whole life with stuff like computers, computer games, the internet, electronic games, etc. and can't really imagine my life without them. Recently, I started studying with a computer and now I type for practically everything: class notes, to have fun, to communicate with my friends, etc. I also find that my mental capacity is dumbing down and that I have become lazy, that my concentration very often fails me, I have problems solving simple maths equations without a calculator, my spelling has become pretty sloppy and I make really stupid mistakes.

To say the truth, the new generation is composed of people that are dependent on technology: in a car, we will watch movies, play on our DSs, use our mobile phone's WiFi or internet access to text our friends or surf on social network sites. At home, we play on the Wii, watch television shows or lose our time on Facebook. I mean, who isn't on social networks?

Confession time: I'm not. I never had a Facebook, or a Twitter, or a Tumbler, or anything that ressembles them. I don't need them: people tell me that it makes you feel like you belong, like if you are who you want to be, like if you are in a room full of cool people, and so on, but I do not need to feel accepted that way, to feel like if I am some person I am not or to feel as if I am in a room full of cool people. For me, social networking are for people who don't really take the time to engage in real, face to face relationships, or just feel the need to be with people 24/7 (an article, The True Costs of Facebook Addiction stated that "Avid Facebook users were also more likely to be unhappier and less content with their lives than others"). To those who'll read this and be bristling with fury, this is an opinion and not an everybody that has Facebook are dweebs campaign. To those who wonder how I manage without Facebook, as I said, I don't need it.

I believe that society is becoming more virtual than real -- and it's quite pathetic, really. People today are always in front of screens so that they can take part of virtual relationships with people that, more often than not, they don't know for real.

So yeah, I agree with the article. Technology is taking over our lives, and it's becoming a problem.