There is no doubt about the fact that science and technology have revolutionized our world by a number of inventions and discoveries that have made our life comfortable, easy, jubilant and entertaining. World is changing due to the benevolences of science and among numerous wonders the fusion of Smartphone’s and internet have brought about a revolution in the present times. Internet and Smartphone’s have now become a necessity for all age groups as we progress towards a new life- a digital life. A Smartphone with an internet connection is truly a blessing of science as it connects us to the whole world and we remain updated regarding every facet of life performing different activities online comfortably.
Despite being so useful, there are several adverse impacts of the same technological combination and a cursory analysis of it reveals that these smart phones have largely detached us from the real and taken us into the virtual world. A Smartphone connected to an internet is a good servant but a bad master and once a person gets addicted to it, he forgets the real world and remains stuck to it all the day enjoying social networking sites, online gaming, online shopping and other likely things. We often see most of the people sitting among their family members or among their friends chatting to their other friends on social sites. Though physically they remain among their families but most often they remain absent minded and are lost in the world of social sites – a virtual world. With each passing day we are losing our real friends and relatives but there is an increase in our friend list on social sites and the irony added to this fact is that we don’t know most of them in real life.
People don’t have time to spend with their relatives but they remain busy all the day in futile discussions on social media with unknown people. No doubt using social media for interaction and keeping ourselves updated is a good habit but getting addicted to it to the extent of forgetting our real world is absolutely disastrous.
The youth folk, nowadays, remain so immersed in playing online games that they sometimes even forget to take meals on time. There have been many cases of mental health due to intense habits of mobile gaming and some people report that their kids even shout during their sleeps. These games make them to forget the actual world and they remain immersed in the virtual world all the time which has a bad impact on their thinking capability and other daily life activities. All such people like to remain in seclusion and feel irritated by other people and thus spend most of their time in isolation in their virtual fantasies which makes them unsocial in their real life. The technology is a blessing only until it remains under human control and when it enslaves us- it becomes a curse!
(The author teaches Geography at GDC Kulgam. He can be reached at rather1294@gmail.com)
