Page 236 - Reliance Foundation School Koparkhairane - School Magazine - Zenith

ATECHNOLOGY- A BOON OR A HINDRANCE?

Ever since the 90s – a decade in which personal computers began infiltrating
households around the world – there has been a constant debate about

whether the growing presence of the Internet and computing technology in
our lives have been a benefit or a hindrance to social interaction.

When you think about it, it seems really strange for a person to sit at the

breakfast table with his mobile phone and scroll through it instead of
engaging himself in a healthy conversation with his loved ones.

I feel that checking updates on one’s phone may appear fine in moderation

but when one starts doing it obsessively, he is paving his way towards an
unhealthy, anxious and ignorant life.

The internet and technology didn’t isolate people; it gave them a means to

isolate themselves. You waste every second of your lives thriving to make
something more presentable only to post a status update or a 'story' on social
media. What is social media? It's an imagery. Social media is an escape from
the real world. Everybody feels the need for a source to escape at some point

in their lives. And I don't disregard that because it's okay.

It's an easy, readily available outlet for everybody today.

What's not okay is the fact that you want to run the entire time from your
own life and rely on social media or the internet or your gadgets as an escape
mechanism. And it’s even more frightening because we don’t even realise
this. What is this urge inside of us to sponsor every living moment of our

lives?

I don’t agree with the fact that technology is what has isolated people. I feel
that anything consumed excessively can have negative impacts. The

internet and the technology, when used to healthy extent are a boon. But,
once people start going overboard and posing obsessively for documenting
their lives on the internet, that’s when we know that it is not the technology
at fault. It is the people, who isolate themselves from one another and cut

themselves from the real world to live away in the ‘La La Land’ they’ve
created for themselves on a virtual platform.

Diya Mahajan - XI C

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