Has Technology Ruined Us?

In front of you, you have access to more information than any other humans in history have ever had. However, the stark reality of our times is that we ask Google more questions than we ask each other. We look at our phones more than we do at one another. We hold electronic devices more than we hold each other.

Now don't get me wrong, the advancement in technology has enormous, outstanding and some irreplaceable benefits for us, but with it carries some serious repercussions. The main side-effect it brings about amongst our generation is that we have curtailed in seeking answers to the larger questions in life. Our society is programmed into typing Facebook more so into Google to see what's going on in other people's lives rather than spending time surfing the internet finding ways to better ourselves.

We all want quick and easy solutions, things we don't have commit to long term to achieve the desired outcome. This is where we've become disconnected. We're idolising people we've never met, rather than people close to us who we admire. Technology has brought us closer to people further away, but further away from the people closest to us. The paradox of our times is that we have more degrees but less sense. We wait for someone else to bring change, without ever thinking of changing ourselves.

Oftentimes we point to our technology and say we are the smartest species on the planet, but do our computers, cars or factories really illustrate how intelligent we are? Or do they demonstrate how lazy we've become? How come people don't use such technology to communicate with others in foreign lands instead of carrying out terrorist attacks or shooting the innocent to achieve international attention?

We say that technology makes us more advanced than our ancestors, yet all we seem to be advancing in is how to destruct the world around us. It was Mahatma Gandhi who sagely once said: "the irony of our times is that we have guided missiles but misguided men." Does this still sum up the society we live in today?

The way we use technology has programmed society into communicating the most with others through the means of a box i.e a phone, laptop, iPad etc. As a result we are more concerned with how our words online will affect people, rather than the effect our actions will have on them. Technology has furthered us into continuance of living box shaped lives.

Thankfully, we all have the power within us to divert the direction our lives are going in. We are all the stars in our own fucking movie. We are the writers of our own script. At any stage in your life can you decide to turn your life into a thriller at the box office. It's that simple. You are the director of your life: no one else is. Every moment of the day you are writing another chapter to your life, whether consciously or not.

None of us choose to be born into this world, none of us choose who to be, but we all the choice to change what we've become. My advice? Step away from the laptop, turn the phone off for an hour and go and live - not just exist in front of a screen.