Technology’s Distraction Weakens Human Skills
Technology can represent an ultimate distraction that inhibits us from effectively engaging in circumstances that are essential to building various human qualities. Authors Sherry Turkle, who holds a doctorate in sociology and psychology and Nicholas Carr, a writer for technology, business, and culture related articles address technology’s significant role in their pieces. Both seek to demonstrate how it may be altering our performance on daily tasks based on the lack of attention we’ve developed from technology usage. “The Empathy Diaries,” written by Turkle, focuses on how technology poses a barrier from human conversation and our ability to empathize appropriately. Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid” is based on a similar idea and how technology is negatively affecting humans and our ability to focus in regards to deep thinking skills. These ideas are something that speaks true to me, considering I have acknowledged technology’s impacts on human concentration and communication as well. The presence of the internet and phones have prevented humans from relying on their own comprehension and the influence of conversation with others to fulfill themselves, as shifting to technology disassociates us from applying skills we once had.
As technology has evolved, it has drawn our attention away from the task presented in front of us, especially when we face public settings or reading texts. One factor that technology has set us apart from is being fully engaged with face-to-face conversations, because it is vital for humans to have these interactions as it enables us to build our interpersonal traits. In Turkle’s text she suggests, “We now rarely give each other our full attention, but every once in a while we do. We forget how unusual this has become, that many young people are growing up without ever having experienced unbroken conversations either at the dinner table or when they take a walk with parents or friends” (351). Turkle recognizes that phones are hindering our ability to devote all of our focus to those whom we are having a conversation with due to the partial focus we dedicate towards our devices. As a result, phones can be considered a primary source of distraction in modern life. When it comes to Carr and his text, instead of viewing technology as a source that inhibits our focus revolving around in-person communication, he analyzes how it eats away at our individual capacity of focusing as a form of deep thinking. Carr writes, “Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do… I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes” (1-2). Carr recognizes that technology’s search engines, like Google, provide a more efficient strategy to intake information, as this outlook gives us answers instantly when simply inputting a question. Therefore, when faced with reading long texts, we lose the engagement since we know we have another accessible source that can easily do the work for us. I agree with Turkle’s perspective that technology is acting as an obstacle from fully dedicating our focus to the present connection we are forming with others, based on how we are hearing but not actually listening. Not effectively listening leads individuals to miss out on learning about one another, and what comes with that is building skills of empathy and sympathy. Speaking from my personal experience, I have checked my phone in the midst of someone speaking to me, so this is an expected occurrence that Turkle addresses. I also align with Carr’s view on how technology is damaging our ability to focus in situations involving in depth reading. I am subject to his idea, due to my lack of patience when I have classwork involving reading articles for instance. As I’m guilty of skimming or quickly reading through it rather than taking the time to thoroughly read completely through. I think it is evident that when we are constantly surrounded by phones, we tend to subconsciously focus on the digital world it portrays, which takes away our full potential to invest in the interactions happening before us. Then there is the internet that displays itself as an efficient tool to gain any kind of information within seconds. This results in humans turning to this easy solution to obtain the answers, so when faced with a lengthy piece of writing we do not have the patience nor attention span to read through it searching for what we need. Instead we devote our full attention to technology, not the people or things with deeper meaning. As we’ve shifted to phones and the shallow threads of the internet it is our skill of focus that suffers.
Technology portrays itself as an efficient resource that we consume by accessing it for entertainment or learning purposes, thus weakening our intellectual capabilities of empathy and memory consolidation. Turkle is primarily concerned with how the amount of technology usage that one consumes puts our empathizing ability at risk during conversation with peers. Contained in Turkle’s text she emphasizes this idea through an example of a young generation’s exposure to digital technology, “As the Holbrooke middle schoolers began to spend more time texting, they lost practice in face-to-face talk. That means lost practice in the empathic arts – learning to make eye contact, to listen, and to attend to others” (346). Turkle values empathy as it is an important characteristic to human development, because it allows us to connect deeper with others and we’re able to understand each other beyond surface level. Although, we pay the cost of losing this skill when we resort to texting as we can’t gauge the full experience of in-person communication. Carr also recognizes technology’s effect on our interpersonal well being, but focuses primarily on the aspect of the brain’s processes of memorization. Since the internet is an efficient tool to gain information from, this requires our brains to adjust to how to withhold information as it flows in a rapid high-speed manner. When Carr speaks on technology’s role in shaping the interworks of our minds he composes, “The variations extend across many regions of the brain, including those that govern such essential cognitive functions as memory and the interpretation of visual and auditory stimuli. We can expect as well that the circuits woven by our use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works ” (3). Here, Carr imposes that the internet may be hindering our ability to fully grasp concepts as it presents a different format to retain information compared to physical written pieces. As the internet presents content through a new visual lens, it requires our brain to rework our approach of tackling that piece of information. With this being said, I align with Turkle on how phones have become the place to venture off to and we miss out on the opportunities to talk in person. It is through this kind of communication that builds the ability to empathize as we use the various ques such as listening and body language to do so. Looking at Carr’s idea on how the use of online sources alters our mind’s ability to memorize context, I understand that information presented digitally and on paper is different, but I see it as more of an adaptability change. This is because based on how information is presented differently we must therefore adjust to learn with it and become familiar with this faster pace of information flow. Carr implies that technology can potentially threaten memorization as we do not immerse deeply with context like we used to with written texts. However, I think this change in how we memorize information is not necessarily a bad thing and can be more of a timesaving method. By briefly overlooking online resources or just pulling up exact answers on the web, we can still manage to grasp the details that strike us as important, rather than being overwhelmed at trying to memorize all the points in a heavy contextual book. Being subject to using the internet and phones is impacting humans’ practical skills in regards to empathy and memorization. The chance to build our empathetic perspective is lost and the way we perceive information through a digital view causes a shift in how we memorize it.
Technology has dramatically altered some of our most human-like qualities, as we’ve become less dependent on our own understanding and the communication with others. Many individuals have become so immersed in some form of technology that it is channeling their true focus away from face-to-face interactions or diving into deep reading. The distraction of the internet and phones creates a missed opportunity to build our ability to empathize, memorize, and focus on situations that matter. It is what comes with being so engaged in these situations that sets us up to be at our best potential throughout life. If we don’t recognize the huge distraction that technology has imposed on us, it will continuously take away from growing our interpersonal traits that we hold.
