I stumbled across this short article this evening on NPR, and I was surprised to see that it not only featured the topic of technological addiction as we discussed it in class today, but that it was also published very recently, on March 21st.
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/03/21/520921006/are-you-addicted-to-your-smartphone
I guess maybe the takeaway is that it isn't an addiction if you don't feel anxiety about it?
I kind of agree with the author's two criteria of judging whether it's addiction or not: whether it has negatively affected the rest of our lives, and whether we feel bad about it ourselves. Maybe for the next generation of people, for instance, as they are born with technology all around them, they will feel their daily use of technology is totally normal and therefore not at all anxious about the prevalence of smartphones or social media in their lives as we might be right now. Then as long as they live a well-functioning life, we probably won't call them addicted to technology.
ReplyDeleteOf course it's a good question whether a person's life quality can be harmed by technology use. We'll need to wait and see how human beings will evolve with the advancing of technology.