The Impact of Technology on Teens

Jillian Troy   

The Impact of Technology on Teens

With the recent advancements in technology, teenagers have been spending a lot of time using any electronic device whether it be a smartphone or tablet. There is less time talking face to face with people when you can just call or text them. Teenagers go everywhere with their phones and it is hard for them to put them down for a minute without the temptation of looking at them. Although the advancements of technology are good for medical treatment and efficient transportation, teens are taking in these advancements in a negative way, hurting their mental and social development.

       Of all teens who own a cellphone, about half of them own smartphones. They can access the internet whenever they have their phone. Although having the internet on you all the time could be a good thing, teens usually don’t use it for the right purposes. During class time when teachers say you can use your phone for educational purposes, there are multiple students who use this time for checking their social media feeds. Any social media whether it be Instagram or Twitter is usually accessed first when teachers allow phone usage in the classroom. Only the few good students would correctly use the phone

Texting is the second most common use of cell phones, following checking the time 65 percent of high school students use their cell phone in school One-fourth of text messages sent by teens are during class hours 42 percent of teens say they can text with their eyes closed One study shows that teens under 18 years old send and receive 2,779 texts a month Teens send and receive five times more text messages per day than adults Those who send and receive more than 50 texts a day also tend to be heavy users of voice calling 54 percent of teens use text messaging as daily communication, and only 38 percent will call on a cell phone

time wisely and use their phones to help out with the work they are doing. Teenagers are so prone to checking on social media that they forget about the work they need to do.


Social media has changed from being a positive invention to having negative effect on teenagers. It is easy for teens now to bully their peers without getting caught by creating fake profiles. With the hundreds of friends teens have, they probably don’t know more than half of the people behind the profiles. With these people having access to what you say and post, they can comment negative and scarring things. Without knowing all your followers, it is hard to fix the problem and find out who truly said these haunting things. Teenagers only let these random people to follow them so that they like or favorite what they post, because the more favorites and likes you have, the more “popular” you are. In reality, most of these likes are probably because teens told people to go like their posts and pictures. This study shows that on social media, teenagers are often posting where they live, what school they go to, their email address, or their phone number. This allows your random followers to know every detail about you and it is not safe. That random girl who followed you who says she's from out of state could just be a forty year old man in a neighboring town stalking you. With new followers and like notifications, its hard for teens to put their phone down and focus on homework and other important things and to keep them safe from the wrong people following them.        
       
         When the iPhone creating Siri and the Windows phone created Cortana, it is easy for teenagers to ask a question and have it answered immediately by their phone. Teens start to forget how to find out things by themselves when their phone can do all the work for them. Then when Siri or Cortana does not answer correctly, teens get mad that they can not answer a simple question. When if they asked a real person they could probably help them out more than the technology can. With these advancements on their phone, teens forget how to do the little things like asking a person the question or reading a book to find the answer.
         
              Technology has been getting better every day. If used in the right way, technology can help our world be a better place. But when teens start using it the wrong way, it impacts them. teens start to forget how to do simple things because their electronic devices can do all the work for them. It is hard to get teens to start focusing on important things and put their phone down. These advancements are hurting their mental and social growth.

Citations:

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"7 Ways Technology Is Ruining Our Lives." Thought Catalog. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2014.

"Are Teenagers Becoming Too Attached to Their Cell Phones? - TopTenREVIEWS."TopTenREVIEWS. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Oct. 2014.