How The Internet Age Made Us Dumber and Lazier

Technology has taken over our world and our minds. Think I’m wrong? Check all that apply to you:

• You have a TV
• You own a computer
• You keep a cellphone
• You need a calculator to answer simple math
• You have used “google”, “blog” or “facebook” in a sentence at least once
• You don’t read books, you read e-books

If you checked one or more, your life is definitely ruled by machines. Truthfully, technology has made our lives efficient and modernized. It has changed how we work, travel and learn. It makes communication with others and renders long division obsolete. However is this really a good thing? Have we really become more efficient than we were thirty years ago, or has our reliance on machines just made us plain lazy and dumb?

As a personal example, I used to tutor my cousin elementary math during the summer a few years back. She was in sixth grade and still had trouble-adding 4+9. When I gave her a calculator though, she was flying through her math questions like it was a breeze. There she was, an eleven-year-old math whiz, but once I took away the calculator, she was back to using her fingers to solve 7+1. Can you believe it? Technology is even making younger kids dumb at an early age.

Some of you may argue, “how is it making ME dumb?” “I watch TV and use the internet all the time and I still get good grades in class.” Technology may not make you brain-dead stupid, however, it may be making you lazier.

With the internet and computerized gadgets, storing information has never been any easier. Bookmarking favorite websites, saving passwords: our computers are remembering everything for us. However, while we are programming our techtoys instead of our brains, are we paying the price with our memory?

Consider this:

• Can you remember your friends’ phone numbers and manually dial them?
• Can you also remember their birthdays and their addresses (home and e-mail)?
• Quickly, can you name the capitals of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada?
• Did you have to Google the answer for the previous question?

Our brain is a muscle – if you don’t exercise it, it turns to mush. That also goes for our memory, which will get duller if you don’t start using it. This is especially important for teens, since the brain is going through rapid brain development. Frankly, in this computer-aged era, we are paying hefty price tag for efficiency.