Do you feel like you can't escape the internet? Like the pull of instantaneous information is so alluring that you are actually addicted to it? Like you lose sleep from the hours of time spent in front of a monitor; often times right before bed? Like you'd love to separate yourself from your I Pad or smart phone, but somehow, your brain refuses to cooperate?
The addictive power of the internet is very real. Every bit as much as your coffee, smokes, or fast food. The real question is: are we better off for having finger tip access to every grain of information your heart ever desired?
The answer to that question will very different, depending in the person. Young people may be seem unaffected by there information addiction; in so much as their health is usually still in tact. But are they really functioning at their peak capacity? Is a tenth grader who tweets and Facebooks from the back of his math class really getting the most out of the academic experience? Quite honestly, that would be very hard to believe. But I am not an educator, parent, or sociologist. I am merely speculating based on what I perceive as being logical.
I, like many of you, am completely dependent on the internet to do my work. So in a very real sense, the internet owns me. It owns my time. And it owns my health. But I need it to earn a living. Thus, I am essentially trading years of my life for a better standard of living. Is it worth it?
People who are close to 40, like me, will be interesting studies in the area of internet related trauma. We were at our peaks when the internet was an infant. And we will grow old on a faster, ever evolving, increasingly all encompassing internet.
When your eye sight begins to fade, and you can't imagine why. When your cognitive process begins to slow, and you become easily confused, and you can't imagine why. And these symptoms of abusing the internet might well be the tip of the iceberg in terms physiological illnesses we will ultimately incur.
Only at that time will we be able to answer the question I posed above. Was it worth it?
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