The Negative Impact Technology has on Children | Teen Ink

The Negative Impact Technology has on Children

November 2, 2017
By andrearuns1 BRONZE, Fort Worth, Texas
andrearuns1 BRONZE, Fort Worth, Texas
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Everyone loves technology, and how we use it to make our lives easier every day. However, I argue that kids and teenagers are negatively impacted by the technology we use today. New technology such as phones, tablets, and computers, have negatively impacted children because teenagers are texting rather than communicating, technology has affected teenager's academic performance, and technology has affected children's health.
Initially, technology has brought us many advances in our society today. It has impacted the way we use our technology. Though technology has been used to help improve our society, we abuse the way we use technology, and this has caused us to become negatively impacted by our technology. Technology has improved our world however, we become addicted to it. This leads to problems that affect us negatively.


Teenagers are texting more rather than communicating with each other, and this can quickly lead to miscommunication. Teenagers are constantly texting one another, and sometimes teenagers read texts in a different way. The tone in text messaging can be misread, and "messages intended to be positive often are interpreted as...negative," (Sarah Jorgensen). The tone in text messaging becomes "misread in the communication between...teenagers," (Sarah Jorgensen). Teenagers "aren't necessarily delivering the type of message they want to deliver," (Sarah Jorgensen), and this could lead to miscommunicated incidents. For example, in Michigan, "and alleged prank sent via text message apparently led to the suicide of an 11-year-old boy,” (Sarah Jorgensen). A misread, harmful prank, text led to a tragic incident where an innocent boy lost his life.


Teenagers spend hours on their phone at one time, and our phones can be a distraction to our academics. Mobile phones potentially affect students' academic performance. For example, "in Japan...68% of the students, who received poor grades owned a mobile phone," (Naveenta Gupta, Sonia Garg and Khushdeep Arora). Also, using a mobile phone to use-email, message, and browse the internet, "were found to be the reasons for...poor academic performance," (Naveenta Gupta, Sonia Garg and Khushdeep Arora). This shows that technology has a negative impact on our academics.


Technology has affected teenager's health. Teenagers have become too wired to their phones, that they become easily addicted. This essentially leads to sleep deprivation, leading to an unhealthy teenager. On average, a person should "sleep about 8-9 hours as investigated by medical research," (Dr Khursheed Ahmad Wani). Teenagers sleep with their phones to bed, and this "jeopardizes physical, emotional, cognitive functioning, and limits domains of influence and connection,” (Dr Khursheed Ahmad Wani). Overall without sleep, this could lead to anxiety and depression, and reduced concentration and creativity.


In conclusion, technology is a double edged sword. Technology is a double edged sword because it can be useful, speeding up a task, but you have to be careful not to get cut. Technology has negatively impacted teenagers because of miscommunication, academic failure, and lack of sleep. Therefore, in order to avoid these traumatic problems, we need to reduce the time we spend on mobile phones. As a society, we need to talk more than texting on our phones, sleep without any distractions, and focus on our academics. I believe we need to focus on receiving better grades, focusing on our health issues, and communicating with people around us instead of focusing on how many followers we have on twitter.



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