Technological Distraction

Lauren Shinozuka wrote “The Dangers of Digital Distractedness” for a class assignment. She is a college student that lives in the world of technology and internet. Her idea to address how dependent the world has become on technology without even realizing it. Lead her to her own evaluation of her life and how technology has changed how she deals and interacts with people.

We live in a time considered to be the “Age of Distraction”, although this age has many opinions on the effects it has on the people. Technology seems to be the main point of discussion when coming to terms with “distraction”. Some authors, such as Alina Tugend and Abigail Leichman, have written articles explaining technologies negative effects on people. Tugend claims that people who multitask with technology the work they produce is usually of lower quality. Leichman focuses more on the fact that people disconnect from one another when they put their focus into things like iPods. However, Jordan Kramer claims in his article that technology hasn’t made people less social. Even before people had accessible technology such as phones and music

In the article “Addicted to Distraction” by Tony Schwartz, he argues that the internet has a relentless pull on humans. He goes into detail on how the internet interrupts all daily activity. Schwartz also explains how he is also a victim to the internet and how he is overcoming the overuse of it. The internet does have a grasp on the attention of humans. People willingly give up their primary focus and activities just to check their devices. People are imprisoned to the internet and don’t even realize that it is leading to a deterioration of their learning ability.

People in the world today depend on technology to help them succeed through life. However, the rate of its use among young kids and teen customers is increasing at a rapid pace. The reason being is that they would rather text a class friend and use social media rather than meeting up with them. In Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, the scenario is similar to the world today, because nobody communicates or connects with people personally, leaving them isolated and alone. Also, in the article called “Tasking Multitasking To Task”, by Mark Harris, he explains that technology is affecting the human mind to lack interest in social skills and hobbies. Harris’ claim that technology is corrupting our lives is correct because many people have lost their attention span for anything beyond a simple phrase.

Distraction is one of the most detrimental effects of technologies on our daily life. While these devices such as computers,

Today’s society is drastically different from the previous. In the past, the most advanced technology was working electricity, no one had to worry about checking their work emails at home. Today we are constantly surrounded by technology, in fact we come in contact with it so often we are almost fully dependent on it in the work place, and at home. Richard Restak shows us the negative effects of that dependency in his essay “Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era”. We are constantly at work with technology, and it is literally changing the way we operate. Matt Richtel has proof of this in his article based off a study by some neurologists titled “Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain”. Today, we have little to no control over our addiction to technology and our work life, the two have merged into one stress filled existence. However, Alexandra Samuel lets us know there are better ways to deal with our technology based work addiction than quitting cold turkey in her article “’Plug In Better’: A Manifesto”. Due to technology, our work and personal lives have become impossible to decipher, leaving no time for a stress free and balanced life away from the office.

To elaborate, technology has caused us to have a shorter attention span. The common ringing of a phone can distract someone from their work. In the video “What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains” by Epipheo, states we lose control of attention and we don’t enjoy consolidation.This proves that students’ attention can be lost because of a simple text message, or something they saw on social media earlier. Some may argue, it is average to check a social media website and text. However, constantly doing this can cause compulsive behavior.

While Tegu describes his surprise about the power of social media as his ideas on Tweets had such a rapid spread and aroused waves of comments and emotions, Sherry Turtle also introduces the strong power of technology that both changes the way people think of themselves and shapes our ways of being. According to her research, technology shifts us from connection to isolation, and in the future technology may become our only companies that will listen to our words and solve our loneliness. Simultaneously, Roger Kay narrates the increasing power of social media which can change our traditional behavioral patterns and modes of thought in“Multitasking: Good Or Bad?”. He indicates that we are likely to spread attention over different sources

People become distracted when giving their attention to anything, in this case being a smart phone or computer, but it isn't social media that's distracting them from anything. Anyone can get distracted and run into someone while playing a game, taking a call, reading an article, or even checking the time; so blaming all of this on social media isn't really the reasonable. Though people relate social media to regular texting or calling, which is the reason many people are in car accidents, it is not the same thing as social media is a network like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram that is a mass user

Sam Anderson book reviewer for New York magazine and writer of many articles like, In Defense of Distraction, Anderson has primarily become interested in the way culture and our habits of reading has drastically changed with technology. In the article In Defense of Distraction, Anderson explores the poor attention one has developed throughout the decades and how this attention has distracted the human mind in a way that it has centered to our cultural attention. It is an inevitable habit we seem to apply in our everyday life’s, in our yoga class one a week, the cancer slowly spreading across our body, the pretty little liars show that is shown every Tuesday that seems to not be enough. We seem to pay attention all the time

Plenty of people miss valuable time that actually matters because of the distracting, network sites. Maureen Henderson, the author of the article “3 Reasons You Should Quit Social Media”, says, “189 million of Facebook users are ‘mobile only’, which means that people are constantly on their phone”(1). So not only does people waist valuable moments on the web, people can be messing up their lives by focusing on their phones, which they do bring everywhere. Henderson also states, “Almost a quarter

Technology causes individuals to lose attention and become easily distracted. In the prologue, a sentence expresses directly how Richtel feels about technology. “Broadly, technology is an outgrowth of the human mind. It is an extraordinary expression of innovation and potential. Modern-day machines serve us as virtual slaves and productivity tools”, (Richtel, 2014), shows technology takes control of our daily lives. This is agreeable statement. Often times, one has an assignment, or task to complete, but will become easily distracted with either, TV, a cell phone, or some sort of technology. Furthermore, the individual is unaware at the amount of time wasted, or even forgets the task at hand. Secondly, the car collision resulting in death sparked emotions and showed the severe need to develop new laws. It was mentioned that there were no state laws against texting and driving in 2006 (Lewis, 2014). According to the NCLS, thirty-seven states have established laws against texting while driving (“Cellular phone use and texting while driving

Over the past few decades, technology has greatly improved. Computers have advanced from being the size of a room to a portable item we can carry in our pockets. The vast majority of Americans carry a cell phone at all times, or at least have one within arm’s reach. In today’s technology oriented world, people can be easily susceptible to an overuse of their cell phone; this susceptibility causes multiple distractions in the key settings of our daily lives.

Is technology a distraction? technology can be a distraction it can be a distraction all the especially if you have a cell phone. We are all distracted by technology all the time. People get distracted from doing other things. however it really depends on who can hanndle having a piece of technology there are people who can be responsible and people who can't. there are a lot of people who can't hanndle having a piece of technology there have been so many car accidents for text driving and why does this all happen because it's the people who are distracting themselves for using a piece of technology. Technology distracts people a lot it only depends on the way you use it and time you use it. Technology can be very useful for important things