by : Valerie Vida Winardi, Junior College 1 Logic

Over the past few decades, humankind’s reliance on digital technology has continued to grow tremendously, dangerously bordering on overreliance. Nowadays, many kinds of technology can easily be found on anyone as they leave the confines of their homes and get on with their daily lives: smartphones, smart watches, headphones and many more. Anyone rarely leaves without at least one digital device with them.

‘Today’s era’, which can be defined as the present or recent times, undoubtedly relies greatly on digital technology- arguably even being digitally overloaded. But what exactly is digital overload, and how well does today’s society fit into that definition? 

‘Digital overload’ can be defined as the act of being overly connected to machinery far from humans such as the use of the Internet or computers, depending on these for even the simplest of tasks. For instance the act of relying on smart watches instead of using ordinary watches and doing a simple mental calculation, to keep their brains working; or installing systems so that one could lay in bed and merely clap his/her hands to turn the lights off. 

It cannot be denied that digital technology overload has made ordinary life so much easier, but at the same time, it clearly cannot be denied that humans have started taking far too much advantage of it and in the long process, harming themselves in different ways. 

Firstly, the further incorporation of digital technology into modern society has caused many to forget how to do even the simplest of tasks, which they learnt how to do when they were younger. For instance, students: They learnt how to do simple calculations in their early primary years, but as they got older, they were permitted the use of calculators and started abusing their use of them, over time. Students can be seen typing in the equations such as ‘2+2’ into their calculators, either far too lazy to manually count or even having started to doubt themselves from the lack of mental mathematical stimulation over the years. Another example of this is quite rare, but it is quite astounding that it happens.

Some people have either never learnt or forgotten how to read the time of an analogue clock, instead relying on digital watches. Both are incredibly simple, and anyone who has learnt either of it at all should be able to continuously use those skills all throughout his life, not relying on a piece of machinery to do it for him.

Further proof of humankind’s digital overload can be seen in those who seem incredibly social through digital communication, but the polar opposite of it in real life. It can be realised that the use of digital communication, such as texting, calls, etc. has made their real-life social skills much underdeveloped, making them much more comfortable in only communicating through a screen instead. In turn, being only comfortable in communicating through a screen causes them to struggle in communicating with people they come across with in real life. 

These days, two persons in the same room often find texting each other so much more preferable than walking over to them and initiating a verbal conversation. Although this may not sound as big a problem as it truly is, it still is much of a problem and will certainly become a greater problem as technology further incorporates itself into our lives. If this problem does not get handled, it is likely that the entirety of society will grow to be antisocial and unable to do face-to-face socialization at all.

Lastly, since the introduction of digital screens, the number of people who wear spectacles or any sort of sight assistance has drastically increased. In a classroom, easily over three-quarters of the population can be seen wearing them, and though it can rightfully be argued that a number of them are largely due to genetics, it also cannot be denied that some of them have been caused or worsened by the fatigue of staring at digital screens. Socialization has now been moved almost completely to the act of using screens, and even schools have started incorporating them into their way of education. 

The average amount of time an average American spends staring at a screen, according to research by DataPortal, can be rounded up to 7 hours and four minutes a day. That’s nearly three-thirds of people’s days, and sleeping itself takes up over a third. That leaves less than a third of a day for people to look at other things, but over time, it has been getting much less. Technology clearly makes jobs easier, but at a cost to our physical body. 

To conclude, although digital technology has benefited all of us greatly in uncountable ways, humans are far too irresponsible with it and have sent themselves into a spiral of digital overload. If they do not learn to be responsible with their technology over time, as the amount of it continues to increase over time, humans are setting themselves on a very dangerous path and forgetting such a simple thing: effort.