Technology Is a Problem

[206Raider]

Think about it... In the old days we built foundations for the future with many skills and traits only learned from person to person contact. Nowadays, it's facebook this, or twitter that. My little brother would rather play a football video game than actually play football. People compliment eachother through picture comments rather than in person, they rather exprss their problems through IM than talking it out with a close friend. We text rather than call now even. It's getting worse ya'll....Not to say I don't love it, but at what point should it stop becuase I think it hinders our future and our generations future.

I mean people get so impatient they don't even read news articles anymore, we read headline to headline. We get bored so quick we can't hardly sit through a 5 minute youtube video without skipping ahead. We all wonder why were not happy but these days everybody wants things right now and technology allows us that but we don't learn any skills or life lessons, it's become boring to everyone to work hard at one thing for very long (guilty myself). We don't gotta go outside to meet people anymore, we already have prejudgements about people by the way they dress. Yeah we might have flying cars but there is still going to be wars and there is still going to be racists....are we really winning?

100 years ago, Social Anxiety problem didn't exist too much. Technology made it easy for us to recluse...

 

[Felgen]

Think about it... In the old days we built foundations for the future with many skills and traits only learned from person to person contact. Nowadays, it's facebook this, or twitter that. My little brother would rather play a football video game than actually play football. People compliment eachother through picture comments rather than in person, they rather exprss their problems through IM than talking it out with a close friend. We text rather than call now even. It's getting worse ya'll....Not to say I don't love it, but at what point should it stop becuase I think it hinders our future and our generations future.

I mean people get so impatient they don't even read news articles anymore, we read headline to headline. We get bored so quick we can't hardly sit through a 5 minute youtube video without skipping ahead. We all wonder why were not happy but these days everybody wants things right now and technology allows us that but we don't learn any skills or life lessons, it's become boring to everyone to work hard at one thing for very long (guilty myself). We don't gotta go outside to meet people anymore, we already have prejudgements about people by the way they dress. Yeah we might have flying cars but there is still going to be wars and there is still going to be racists....are we really winning?

100 years ago, Social Anxiety problem didn't exist too much. Technology made it easy for us to recluse...

The society put less pressure on people regarding social skills 100 years ago. Therefore, diagnoses such as NVLD or ADD didn't exist either. However, there were still people who did develop anxiety centuries ago as well. Two noteworthy examples are Ludwig II and Friedrich Nietzche.

 

[AnxietyDave]

I have to agree that technology is influencing the way people choose to do things, but it has also opened up a world of information to people who might have battled to get hold of it before.

Yes it does make it easier for people with social phobias to become reclusive far easier, but it also has opened up portals for them to find information on how to address their disorder as well.

The only reason why we think that social phobias did not exist long ago is because it was not diagnosed as a medical condition back then.

 

[Kinetik]

We do live in a lazy facebook/iphone-obsessed world, so it's not surprising that more and more people lack social skills. I do blame parents as well though, as I think they've become too soft. I understand that each generation wants its kids to have it better and easier than they did, but what we're doing is raising self-defeating people with no life skills and an aversion to everything.

Ultimately I think people become reclusive because they have no confidence in their abilities. Instead of being shown how to do things and then being sent off into the world, we bounce around feeling incompetent, unskilled, and undervalued. Making kids independent is a huge aspect of parenting and everyone seems to have forgotten about that. We want more and more convenience, while raising kids to believe that the world is a scary place, thereby coddling them to infinity and enabling a reclusive lifestyle. Even the education system blows. We get no general life education while the world is becoming increasingly complex, and universities/colleges are almost exclusively theoretical with no hands-on work required. It just all seems really backwards to me, and I think the world desperately needs to update its way of doing things.

 

[Kiwong]

Technology also helps us connect with the world.

I love technology:

Garmin sports watches, timimg mats/chips, online computer results, web forums, interactive web pages, blogs, orthotics, knee tape, online ezines, music software, digital cameras, zoom/macro lenses, photogra[hy software, online web albums.

I don't own a mobile phone, and never will.

 

[BlackPuma]

It's difficult to determine whether technology is a problem or not, yes for us social phobes it makes it easier to fall into to reclusive habits. But for let's say.. doctors and such, it's a tool with which they save lives. They don't know anything about a certain lethal illness, they quickly approach someone that has more experience with it (sometimes even across the world) through means of IM's, fax, video chat or E-mail.

I don't think the problems lays with technology itself, but more with how we are taught to use it at young- and middle age. In essence, it's our own fault. We let ourselves grow dependent on these machines.

The machines are merely tools, we are the artists that craft the social phobia. With big help from negative outside influences of course, but we turn to our machines, not the other way around.

 

[Danfalc]

I don't think the problems lays with technology itself, but more with how we are taught to use it at young- and middle age. In essence, it's our own fault. We let ourselves grow dependent on these machines.

I agree with this,like a lot of things,they are not automatically good or bad,it just depends on how we put them to use.

It's an interesting question to dwell on though and I'm not sure there is one definitive answer,or a right or wrong answer.Technology has done so many great things,but also some horrible things.

When I watch programs on tv,about these tribes who still live deep in the jungle and stuff,I think they have the right idea.They are such close communities and there happiness is not dictated my money or technology.No taxes to pay..I'm sure they suffer there own hardships but they seem happy people.

 

[Luke1993]

I wonder if we would do better or worse in an earlier time period?

 

[coyote]

I wonder if it might have been easier to be reclusive in past centuries.

Not as many people, wide open wilderness, no fences, no Social Security Numbers, credit cards, electric bills, phone bills, radar detectors, vehicle registrations, driver's licenses, fingerprint data bases, etc....

Wanna leave and go somewhere else? Be someone different?

Just pack your bags and head out over the horizon.

We just don't have the freedom to do that nowadays. We're trapped in the nice little cocoon we've spun for ourselves.

 

[206Raider]

I'm not trying to bash technology becuase it is a wonderful thing, it's what I'm used to. The problem is that it's what everyone is used to now, I get a sense that the world is getting dumber even though technology is getting so much better. I look at the younger generation and they don't seem to want to go outside anymore. What I feel will probably happen is that more and more people are going to end up becoming more reclusive. Why leave home, when you have everything at your disposal right infront of you at home? I agree with Kinetik as well, parents....even my own....made it easy to stay at home, and protect us from anything negative which would probably have made me tougher and mroe confident but parents nowadays are even worse and want to shelter their children from anything that seems hurtful to their children, nobody wants to say NO nowadays.

 

[Pookah]

There wasn't as much population/competition in the past either.