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Society's Addiction to Computers Essay

Decent Essays

Over the past years, with the exponential advance in technology, computers have developed to be the leader of the world. Increasingly, computers are playing more roles in helping people to remember a friend’s birthday or maintain relationships with others. Therefore, they have contributed positive to the development of relationships and improvement of the general knowledge of the society. Critics however argue that the society is becoming progressively more dependent on computers. In this essay, the arguments for the dependency on computers will be presented in terms of it being a basic necessity and how social and physical activities are being overwhelmed by them and the unleashing in health problems that can be manifested by the …show more content…

As Hillis (2010, p. 93) clearly states ‘like it or not, the dependencies are too strong to allow us to disconnect. Our destinies are entangled with one another's and with our technologies’.

Secondly, this dependency on computers has actually taken over people’s involvement in other social and physical activities. In the past, children and even adults used to play table games or even do more exercises in their free time. However, nowadays computers are taking over the way people spend their free time, causing an antisocial disorder and a sedentary lifestyle. A research carried out by Young (1996a) indicates that dependency on computers, specifically Internet, had led to several problems at workplaces and in families or with social relations (cited in Widyanto & Griffiths, 2007). Opponents of this view, however, argue that this advantageous technology allows antisocial people to be more extroverted and raise their self-esteem. For example, many people can be more extroverted and even say thing that they will not say in person. Nevertheless, many researches have proved that users began to replace their social and physical activities, changed their sleeping patterns and their mood with the increasing dependency on computers. More people prefer to stay at home to be connecting with others through “virtual” friendship than socializing and meeting others in real life. An article by Kraut et al. (1998,

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