A Chain Reaction | Teen Ink

A Chain Reaction

January 11, 2010
By ricknasa SILVER, Houston, Texas
ricknasa SILVER, Houston, Texas
5 articles 0 photos 0 comments

In our nation’s youth, teens are becoming more caught up in their technological lives, and less in their spiritual and family lives. While becoming more caught up in technology our teens are losing their social interactive skills and spending much less time with their families and friends. Our youth being this addicted to technological advances is having a negative reflection but also bring people together.
The problem with the youth is that their families hardly ever spend time with them usually only on holidays now. By not truly knowing what’s going on in your teen’s life, how can we help them through hard times, if we don’t even know if they’re going through hard times? “They are also reported spending less times with families”! A non internet user spends 287 minutes with his family and a internet user spends 185 minutes with his family.
Technology is also bringing on new relationships. Through these new relationships people are meeting other random people because they both share a love of technology. iPods which can store thousands of songs are bringing people together, that enjoy the same type of music. Lisa said “iPods bring people together.” iPods can also be used for entertainment on a bus, a plane, a car, and even plane rides. Instead of looking out a window for hours, you can listen, play games, and even watch movies on them.
Internet is being used to meet new people, but this is destroying our social skills. By only talking to people through technology, we are losing our social skills. The people that use the Internet only spend 59.8 minutes with friends a day, the people that don’t use it are spending 94.2 minutes per day.
Some people argue that technology is a great way to communicate. I say it’s a good way to communicate, but we are spending way too much time with technology and not enough technology with our loved ones. Others say that using technology builds up your social skills. I say it doesn’t, because you can pretend to be anyone over text messages and Internet usage. If you have a face to face conversation with someone, you can’t pretend to be anybody but yourself.
Technology is having a major negative reflection on our youth. So what? Why should I care about this? Well this affects everyone, because families are losing time with their loved ones. Also people are not their true selves on the Internet. This is like a chain reaction by using technology you are losing social skills and time with your loved ones.


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