Have you ever looked around while in a car wondering how we got to this point? There's so many cars, buildings, signs and everything else that were not meant to be here. To think it was all plain grass at some point and now is all man made structures, is this for the better?

There are many advantages and disadvantages to the new technology in today's time as it helps make our lives easier and is helpful for many reasons like health, transportation, communication and so much more. Everybody has a device that you can do anything from a click of a button which is very useful but can hurt us more than benefit us. When humans are given something we don't always know when to say “enough is enough''. 

When did this really start, you may ask. As stated in Settling the Great Plains: Inventions and Adaptations, by David Burns,  “In the decades after the Civil War, from 1865 until the early 1900s, hundreds of thousands of Americans moved into the area of the West called the Great Plains. Before the Civil War, most people going to the West passed right over the Great Plains.  They considered the area a vast treeless wasteland.  Their goal was to get to the far West - usually California or Oregon. After the Civil War, the perception of the Great Plains changed.  There were many new inventions, adaptations, and technological advances that made it possible to farm the land in that area.”  Since then, the innovations and upgrades to the world have been taken at full speed. It  makes me really think about how people at the peak of these changes felt. However, it probably became normal for a certain time. This relates to the epidemic of new technology slowly but surely taking over the lives of people across the globe. As stated in How mobile phones have changed our brains By Amanda Ruggeri, “One recent report found that adults in the US check their phones, on average, 344 times a day – once every four minutes – and spend almost three hours a day on their devices in total. The problem for many of us is that one quick phone-related task leads to a quick check of our email or social media feeds, and suddenly we've been sucked into endless scrolling. It's a vicious circle. The more useful our phones become, the more we use them. The more we use them, the more we lay neural pathways in our brains that lead to picking up our phones for whatever task is at hand” This article made me think of how often I use my phone and the immediate instinct to grab it if I hear a notification. It feels like we've been wired to use these phones.  As humans, we naturally got so used to the comfort in our cell phones and behind computers. People also tend to get extremely uncomfortable with real life human interaction. Researchers found “people who used a smartphone for more than 4 hours per day had higher rates of stress, thoughts of suicide, and substance use than those with usage below 4 hours per day.” 

This is a major issue in today's society. Especially with technology getting better and better making humans more excited to try the new phone compared to meeting new people. It has its Pros and Cons, but as of right now it seems it's only leading to negatives. We together need to realize how much we depend on our technology.