Prompt 2 Draft
Imagine this: you are doing your homework, when suddenly, your phone buzzes. The familiar sound immediately triggers an intense need to stop what you are doing and pick up your phone. Your mind begins to race as you think of what the notification could be: snapchat, twitter, a text. Before you know it, an hour has passed as you scroll deep into your instagram feed. The internet provides an endless flow of distractions, and it does not seem to be slowing down anytime soon. The digital world is a massive emerging culture that is absorbing teens and young adults into participation, whether it be for their own joy, or for fear of missing out. These technologies have endless benefits. Because of this, people all over the globe are constantly drawn to its many uses. While this can be a good thing in some aspects, it makes the internet an enormous distraction, which serves little benefit to young adults. However, what is the alternative? The internet is most definitely a distraction, yet we rely on it in many other ways. Society must find a way to ease reliance on the internet for social interaction and simple joys, while increasing usage of the internet for informational purposes: there must be a healthy medium. While the digital world in today’s society gives many benefits to those of all ages, it is giving an even larger disadvantage to the many young adults who are constantly distracted online.
Social media seems to have an intense power over young adults. From video games, to apps, to music software; the internet offers an outlet to everyone, from any walk of life. It provides an escape for students, a way to cope with stress. However, it comes at a significant cost. While providing access to groundbreaking research and endless information, the internet also offers great distraction. It is more than easy to get sucked into online content, such as videos, games, or interacting with others on social media. Young adults do not always have the time to spare that they spend online when they should be focusing on growing up and transitioning into the real world. This, even though it seems like a minor distraction at the time, can lead to a large setback in the timeline of a young adult’s life. Spending a great deal of your young life worrying about your appearance on social media can feel as if it almost takes over your mind, distracting you from reality. As Sam Anderson quotes Herbert A. Simon in his article, “In Defense of Distraction”, “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention”. This “poverty of attention” leads students to lower grades, lower attention spans, and a strain on academics as students struggle to multi-task between homework and their social media accounts. Neuroscientists have conducted many studies into attention span, memory and multitasking. Results show that the brain becomes overwhelmed when forced to multitask, therefore shifting its processing from the hippocampus to the striatum. In other words, instead of storing information as memory, it is recognizing information as a small task. This makes it incredibly difficult to recall or even learn whatever it is the person is doing. Multitasking will not help you to do two things at once in a more efficient way, but instead cause you to give less focus and effort on both tasks.
Along with the struggle of multitasking and mental strain, the digital world is also capable of masking personal problems for people. The internet provides an escape for students who may not be able to relate with peers in the real world. Many young adults take to websites like twitter and tumblr to find others online with similar interests. This allows them to do so without actually talking to people in real life, which many people prefer not to do. It also allows people the ability to present themselves as an ideal version of who they truly are. Young adults are able to present themselves however they would like on social media, hiding the reality of an identity that they may not like or wish to change. Obviously, it is easy to see how these possibilities can lead to an addiction and dependance of the internet. Anderson compares the internet to a “Skinner box”, one that manages to seep into our minds and feed “our deepest mechanisms of addiction”. Young adults and developing teens no longer need to leave the home in order to interact with others online or to experience joy, excitement, and many other emotions and pleasures.
Another problem that has emerged from the overuse of internet is going blind to real humanitarian issues. They are constantly overshadowed by much simpler events in the media, such as celebrity drama, the best new music, who just won in the sports world, and what is going on on the most popular tv shows. You are more likely to hear about those things than natural disasters, deaths and tragedies, because everyone is so engulfed online in media. Staying distracted online is taking everyone’s attention away from the things that need attention the most. To fix this problem, we could use large social media platforms to inform of everyone these news stories that need to be heard. While the major events usually turn up on social media, it is not enough. Celebrities are still getting more attention than those dying in third world countries. Young adults are the future, and they have the power to change the world. Thomas King, in his TEDx talk “Adults, we need to have the talk”, says “I don’t know for sure what the world will look like in twenty years, but what i can guarantee you is that it won’t look anything like it does today.” There is no stopping our changing world, so why don’t we work to make it the best future possible, using the technologies we have? If the internet is one of our most powerful resources, we should be using it to benefit those all around the world, instead of getting distracted by it.
Would you rather see the world through a screen or with your own eyes? Being constantly distracted by technology, you might never get the opportunity to go out and do so. It seems as though everyone is on instagram, looking at pictures of those who are experiencing the beauties of nature themselves, instead of actually going out on their own to do so. Parents constantly complain how their kids are “always on their phone” and we just laugh it off, but should we take that comment more seriously? Is staying in your room all day watching netflix really better than going out and spending time with your family? Technology constantly removes us from the world around us; we must stop letting these distractions take away moments that we will never be able to get back.
While it seems that getting distracted by technology is inevitable, we can always find a way to power through it. To do so, we must focus on using technology for its strong benefits, not the simple uses that engulf us as a generation.
