Over the time, society has witnessed technological advancements gradually, making our everyday lives more convenient and well, more interesting. Digital devices have made our lives better. We are living in a time, where Alexa is playing the music for us, Siri is making our calls and google is setting our alarms. We are living in an age, where everything and everyone is digital. Things that used to be luxury at some point, have become the habit for us.
It is indisputable to thank technology, as it has positively impacted our lives; directly affecting our lifestyle, health, privacy, business and human behaviour. We have come a long way and are living in an ultra-connected world, but is there anything that we have left behind? In this chaos of digitizing our lives, we have left behind the true happiness that people used to enjoy, along with everything else in place. Excessive use of gadgets, lack of offline communication with family & peers, has made us more restricted to ourselves. This leads to mental health issues, and hence ever rising cases of suicides.
Today’s Youth, being more addicted to the digital world is lacking the skills and a desire to communicate with their peers, face to face. People are becoming more addicted to the social media, thereby spending too much of their free time, scrolling through the Instagram and Facebook feeds. This results in severe mental health problems to them, because they tend to compare themselves to the dummy perfect images of others they see online.
In all these crests and troughs of tech in our lives, which is becoming a bane rather than a boon for us, what’s the solution? There’s an old saying – “Excess of everything is bad”. Everything in moderation works best for our lives. It has become imperative for us to monitor the use of tech in our daily routines. Excessive use of anything can do more harm than good, and we should bear this in mind, before we rush into digitizing our lives. Very few people know or practice the concept of “Digital Detox”. This method, not only frees up time, but also provides one with the mental health benefits. Doing a digital detox is about taking charge of how you spend your time and energy. It helps you realize what you want more or less, so you can break unhelpful habits and create new, more meaningful ones.
In all, technology improves our life, making it easier. However, this is for our convenience, and that any over indulgence in the use of apps, online tools, smart devices, etc., may sometimes lead to tragic effects. Yet, if tech innovations are used wisely, they tend to bring good to us the society too. Clearly, technology by itself is neither good or bad. It is totally up to us, the way and extent to which we use these matters.
