Technology Hazards

    Most of the time, I always have my cellphone on me. I check my email, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram every few minutes, similar to the majority of Americans these days. In fact, one of the reasons why it is taking me so long to write this blog post is likely thanks to the fact that I have Facebook open at the same time.
    According to research from Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Lab, as this article explains, an experiment was performed at Carnegie Melon in which two groups took a test; one group was not interrupted and the other group was interrupted by an instant message. The result was that the interrupted group answered questions correctly 20 percent less often than members of the group who were uninterrupted. This is even further of an issue because "a typical office worker gets only 11 minutes between each interruption, while it takes an average of 25 minutes to return to the original task after an interruption." All these distractions really do make people dumber and less affective in getting things done.
     Thinking more about the issue of all these technology-based distractions, it does not seem like there is really any cure for it. Technology only continues to advance in America, which just increases our access to social media and other ways of communication through technology. Thus, we will just continue to have more and more distractions. While technology advancements are good in some respects, the harm that they do to a person's brain power need to be kept in mind. As the experiment described above shows how technology interruptions make us dumber, it also affect our social skills. Take me for example: just a few minutes ago I was sitting next to my mom typing away on my cellphone while she was talking to me. After five minutes, I realized that I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, thanks to the meaningless conversation I was having via text message. The more and more we text, the less likely we are to have skills in talking to someone face-to-face. How, if in any way, can these interruptions be lessened, or are they already built too far into society?