Is the Internet making People Lazy?
Is the Internet is making people lazy? I think so. People, specifically teens are wasting time playing video games, indulging in addictive social media apps, and using Internet browsers that are adding a handicap to people’s brains. To make things even worse these websites are designed to keep people on their websites for longer. The Internet is addictive and it is an endless cycle of highs and lows, it causes us to put away skills, memory, and knowledge and instead just search for something when we can’t think of it.
People are using social media, websites, and online video games to cope with the mental health struggles they have. According to the article entitled Internet addiction by Psychology Today “Common sense media finds that 59 percent of parents “feel” their kids are addicted to their mobile devices-just as 27 percent of the parents feel that they themselves are.” The addiction that I am talking about and the addiction that the quote above is referencing is a more casual definition of the word. When an addiction takes over, you become reliant on that object, you get a sense of fulfillment from that object.
I think it’s safe to say, we’ve all had a bad day (School, Work etc.) When we come home from that bad day most of us sit down, watch our favorite show, play a mind-numbing video game, get on social media and see what a hundred celebrities want us to see them doing today, and use a long list of other internet-based apps and websites. Internet usage is an endless cycle of highs and lows, when you first get on a new social media app or discover a new website, or find a new computer game, you get a high and experience this rush of dopamine but after using this app for a while you don’t get the same rush, and if you do, the high only comes every once in a while, and when we don’t get that rush we feel drained
This problem affects teens the most. According to the article entitled Internet addiction by Psychology Today “Sixty-nine percent of parents say they check their own devices at least hourly, as do 78 percent of teens.” Teens are naturally more self-conscious and less disciplined, that is just because teens have less life experience and so much is changing for them, they are discovering their identities and getting more responsibilities. The idea that teens are on their devices more isn’t a universal principle, there are plenty of adults who struggle and who are always on their phone, and there are plenty of teens who aren’t reliant on the internet as well, but as you can see from the stat above generally, teens are more likely to be “addicted” to the internet, and to their devices.
The Internet is becoming a Handicap to Imagination, Memorization, and Organization. According to an article called Piece of Mind: Is the Internet Replacing Our Ability to Remember? written by Scientific American, “…when people are faced with difficult questions, they are likely to think that the Internet will help them find the answers. In fact, those who expect to able to search for answers to difficult questions online are less likely to commit the information to memory.” The Internet is a bottomless pit of entertainment and information, because of this people rarely slow down and think and use their imagination, people also spend so much time on their devices, that they become more concerned with being digitally organized than being physically organized. People have become dumber because of their reliance on the internet, people don’t try to memorize stuff anymore, but instead, they just search for something on the internet as soon as they have questions. Even more concerning, having all this information at our fingertips causes people to not try to memorize phone numbers or history, or even basic math anymore.
In conclusion, we need to be more calculated in our internet usage, and learn to set our devices down. People need to stop using the Internet to cope with their problems, Parents need to put measures in place to ensure their teens and kids aren’t spending too much time on the Internet. Teens need to make sure they are being intentional about screen time. Everyone should try to use the internet less to help their Imagination, Memorization, and Organization flourish.
