The Impact Of Technology On Our Lives

If you were to ask me a year ago, if the technology I was using was helpful or harmful, I would have said it’s harmful, but now a year later and having my world turned upside down like literally, it is now the most helpful than ever. Yes, there are some terrible effects of technology like increasing health problems with eye strain and affecting our sleep. However, if we didn’t have the technology that we use today, My parents and other workers could not do their job, I would not know a lot of the things, I know now because I look them up to fact check them and distance learning would not be a thing today. Technology is great and has a helpful positive influence in today’s world. 

During my parent’s job life, with working 45 hours a week, one managing payroll and another managing a company. They are behind computers all day every hour; I remember when I was little 7 or 8, my Dad would bring me to his work and I would sit in his office. Meanwhile, he and many other of his co-workers would sit behind a computer hunched over, doing their work, My dad would say that I would just sit and stare at them with my eyes so big. I was wondering what they were doing, they all looked so concentrate on their computers. Later, I found out that they were addressing emails, tracking vehicles, getting appointments fit into a schedule, using google earth, and figuring out measurements all on a computer. Now years later, recalling back to that and remembering, seeing them using the technology, it puts it into perspective because, if my dad’s co-workers didn’t have the technology they couldn’t do their job the same, opposed to if they had the technology. All that they do on computers make it so for their company to work easier and properly function every day.   

Over quarantine last year, I had a lot of free time on my hands, So I considered keeping learning and educating myself. I can look thing’s up online and learn about them, One thing I keep learning was the Mount St Helens eruption in 1980. I saw a documentary on Disney plus about it and found some good articles that I think helped me. It talked about how the eruption was, how long it lasted, why it happened, where it was, who died, and interviewed survivors that are still alive now. if I didn’t have the power to use technology to learn about the Mount St Helens eruption, I would have never known that Harry Truman died there in his lodge or after the eruption smoke covered 12 states including Oregon and California. The things that I find applying technology helps me to expand my knowledge and I can fact check things I hear or read because I want the full truth of it, not one side but both sides so that I can grow to form my opinion and, my skills like reading and history are speeding up. 

With distance learning and having the experience of it for 5 months so far, I recognized if there was no technology right now I wouldn’t be writing this paper on a google document or having the learning I’m getting now. Me and everybody else in school would do nothing and it would lower our mental health by a lot. We would become more depressed, and lose a lot of the stuff that we learned over the last few years because since the pandemic started, It’s been a year so envision having your kid not in school for a year doing nothing because you have no technology. For me, when we have the 6-month summer break when it all started, I know I lost a lot of the stuff I learned over my freshman year and it was hard when school started back up in September, to retrieve. I still felt like I was a freshman because I never finished my year and I’m jumping to being a sophomore. So with distance learning, it’s a supplement to an actual school, and it’s something to do in the meantime to still get the key point’s in your grade level for classes. My mom would always say “If I didn’t have school and I’m a sophomore, next year I’ll be a junior so I’ll have the knowledge of a sophomore but my age will tell different” I think that’s very important to hear because all distance learning is on is technology, we all rely on that right now so much then how we use to. It helps us get through our zoom meetings, doing essays, geometry, and all the other stuff we would do in-person school.