The advances that the world has made in technology over the last century have undoubtly made life easier for most people. This statement holds true regarding most everything from the invention of the car to the creation of the iPhone. And with the new technology came a greater appreciation for the internet. Think about it: how many people do you know that don’t use the internet?
When it comes to older generations, less people have accepted the internet. However, as far as our generation is concerned… Most of us can’t imagine life without it. We use it for almost everything, including staying connected to friends, listening to music, and looking up questions for homework. But is the fact that we can use the internet to find anything and everything ruining our ability to come up with ideas and answers for ourselves?
Although humans are programmed to be natural problem-solvers, it seems as though the internet is fostering a new kind of laziness- a laziness of intellect. Instead of using reasoning and thinking through a problem in order to figure out a solution, most of us nowadays just google whatever it is we’re looking for, whether it be an explanation of how to fix a broken cell phone or the answer to one of the questions in our geology assignment. Because all these quick fixes are available to us in an instant thanks to websites such as About.com and Wikipedia, we no longer have to actually understand the process of figuring them out for ourselves.
On top of this increasing laziness, people have become more impatient. The fact that we tend to get overly irritated when our internet connection is not working fast enough (and you’ve got to admit, we’re all guilty of this) only confirms the fact that people’s patience is decreasing. And if you’re not willing to wait long for a website, which would give you an instant answer for whatever problem you were trying to solve, to load, then you probably think it would take way too long to come up with the solution on your own.
I know all of this makes it sound like I’m hating on technology or I’m ashamed of the intellect of the human race, but I promise I’m not. (Trust me, I’m completely guilty of looking up pretty much everything online because it’s easier that way.) All I’m saying is that I think as technology progresses, we should make a conscious effort to stay innovative and try not to rely too heavily on the internet.
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