Technology and Older Adults Essay

The impact of aging said to have a great effect on the capacity of learning of the adult. (Falasca, 2011). There are several eye problems become common as they age, cognitive ability, hearing impairments and perception may not be sufficient enough to understand and grasp all the information or it could be compromised (Falasca,

Exerting personal anecdotes on the way the internet has changed him; Carr begins his book in a subtle manner. He begins describing one of his first dilemma’s, “I had become trapped, not unhappily, in the “upgrade cycle” I retired the aging Plus in 1994,

The target audience for this trial program is seniors (65 years and older) residents of Glacier Hills senior living community and for registered participants at Downtown Library, with little to no knowledge of computers or internet nor access to a personal computer. If successful, this program would expand for seniors of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, whether or not they have a personal computer.

The younger generation of Americans, those under the age of thirty, are often criticized as being the “dumbest generation”. Many Americans blame technology for making “goods so plentiful, schooling so accessible, diversion so easy, and liberties so copious” (Bauerlein). Many are posing the question: Is the increasing ease in life causing our intelligence to slip? Those under thirty are not the dumbest generation, in fact, technology is expanding, changing, and pushing in new directions intelligence and mental capacity.

Bauerlein claims, “Young Americans have much more access and education than their parents did, but in the 2007 Pew survey on ‘What Americans Know:1989-2007,’ 56 percent of 18- to 29- year-olds possessed low knowledge levels, while only 22 percent of 50- to 64- year-olds did”(Bauerlein). This allusion to a Pew survey shows that more under 30’s are dumb, this is believed to be because of this generation’s access to new technology. Even though the older generations may have had less information they showed up smarter, this is because instead of having all information easy at the finger-tips they had to read and learn. Even with all of the technology they have, this

Often when the younger generation catches wind of their elders criticizing technology they chalk it up to their inability to adapt to new environments, or being “stuck in their ways”. They think, “ I have no problem surfing the web, so why can’t grandma send a simple email without getting hung up on spam?”. Perhaps, some of Grandma’s difficulty come from not being able to locate internet explorer on her desktop, however it is very much possible that it is the computer rather than the person that is making it troublesome to concentrate on the task at hand. In his book The Shallows:What The Internet is Doing to Out Brains Nicholas Carr writes about the effects of the Interest’s distracting environment

The Internet is not making the generation of people 30 years old or younger less intelligent, but changing how they think.. The cartoon from The New Yorker depicts a person sitting on their computer right in front of a wall of library books(Source H). This cartoon shows that the internet is not a tool that distracts us and makes us less intelligent, because that person who is using their computer can access

Nicholas Carr’s target audience is anyone who uses technology, whether they are the younger generations for it or the more traditional generations against it. He establishes common ground by pointing out some of the positive, along with the facts to back up his theory on the negative. His motive for writing this essay is to provide a connection between the increase of technology to the decrease abilities in learning behaviors.

Essay Many Americans today are extremely familiar with the term “technologies and digital media,” and how they are not helping young Americans with education and general knowledge, which led to the generalization that they are the dumbest generation (Mark Bauerlein). However, according to the articles, The Dumbest Generation?Don’t Be Dumb by Sharon Begley, Is Google Making Us Stupid? By Nicholas Carr, and Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project, Mizuko Ito et al., the authors all came up with one generalization that technologies and media are helping the young generation in their learning and they are instead, not the dumbest generation. The claim that those under age thirty are “the dumbest generation.”

Despite criticism and popular belief towards Generation Y, those under the age of thirty are not “the dumbest generation.” The new technology that has immersed over the past several decades is changing how the brains of Gen Y work, but not negatively. It is rather improving our mental thinking ability. Cognitive scientist Marcel Just stated, “Insofar as new information technology exercises our minds and provides more information, it has to be improving thinking ability.” (169)

After many decades elapsed, nowadays, the quality of human life is growing better. Human beings always search and invent new things in order to meet their needs. There are not only changes in the way that people dress and behave, but also there are many changes in forms of entertainment. In the past when technologies had not developed much, people usually entertained by getting together to dance, sing, or listen to music; many of them went to a small bar in the community to drink or play cards. Today is completely distinct from the time in the past. With innovative science and modern technologies, the entertainment has become easier and more convenient for all people. Everyone can relax and amuse themselves wherever and whenever with modern electronic devices such as cell phone, tablet, LCD TV, laptop, etc. Therefore, technology has become part of our life. Many people say that we could not do anything without technology; it helps people to make work easier. In fact, technology not only impacts our daily lives, but it also has a strong influence on the criminal justice system. If law enforcement officers apply technology to their investigations, it will assist to make the investigations less difficult and more efficient. So, what has the technology already helped to make an improvement in the criminal justice field, and how has it impacted on the law enforcement?

Older adults are thus slower in receiving information through sensory receptors, slower in transmitting, processing, and interpreting information, and are slower in acting upon it” (Shulman, Silverman, & Golden).

Does technology affect people or do people affect technology? Technology affects every aspect of our lives, we all use it every day with little thought. People take it for granted, sometimes knowing little about what brought that technology into existence. At the same time older generations have a hard time adopting the new technologies and continue to favor technology they are accustomed. The idea of technology is as old as the human race. To understand technology; first we need a common definition. Technology is anything that makes a task easier for someone or something.

As our age moves up in years and we become senior citizens we slowdown in productivity and begin to re-explore life as

Senior moments are a temporary moment of lapsed memory it the measured loss of one’s faculties that are usually associated with the elderly. These moments of lapsed memory are now seen to occur more often in the this era of data. “A Trending Machine national poll finds that millennials aged 18 to 34 are, in fact, much more likely than those 55 or older to forget what day it is...” (Emling); why does this senior moment seem more onset for the millennials? Could it be because the reliance on technology. The widespread use of the internet has affected the way people find information and hold on to the information