Disadvantages of technnology dependence

However, people should reduce their dependence on technology because it can exert seriously detrimental effects related to human health as well as privacy. In term of human health, not only physical health but also mental health is negatively affected by overusing technology. Depending on technological devices is the same as the addiction to junk food that seems delicious and attractive, but not nutritious and harms human health (Clark, 2019). Although having been warned of the problems of processed products, many people do eat them without worrying, just because of its looks and its tastes. Similarly, innovative technology seems to be available every time and everywhere, and is designed to attract users by the ability to perform multitasks, which makes people keep wallowing in and ignore the harmful health-related consequences. A 2013 Bhaskar Medical College study suggests that 51.5% of the 441 subjects experienced frequent headache attacks due to continuous usage of smartphones; 35,6% said eye strain is an obvious consequence of staring at their phones so often; and 32.2% complained about body aches, especially headaches after overusing mobile devices. Apparently, using computers and other smart devices for a long period of time can make users’ eyes blurry due to exposing to a large amount of blue-light and radiation from screens. Besides, grave implications due to physical inactivity and deprivation of sleep during prolonged usage of digital advances include backache, shoulder-neck pain and obesity, which possibly becomes more detrimental and leads to serious diseases such as cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer, etc. Moreover, many psychological problems will appear if users depend on technology. Spending huge amounts of time dealing with technology probably reduces face-to-face communication and interaction with surrounded people, which causes loneness, depression, the feeling of being abandoned and other mental health issues. For example, when seeing friends’ perfect life on social media, people have tendency to feel unconfident and ashamed, which is likely to cause social intimacy problems. Another problem with the dependence on technology is the deprivation of privacy and security. It’s getting easier for professionals and hackers to chase personal information and location of users for the sake of their own purposes. Researchers show that in the first quarter of 2017, 61% of 290,000 phishing attacks aims at financial institution and payment services, which causes the loss of 687 million dollars for internet users during six months (Kordestan & Shajari, 2018, p.1). Companies can easily capture users’ demographics like ages, genders and steal other credentials by phishing emails and requesting users to provide their private information or buying users’ data from other websites to target potential customers. In the worst case scenario, users’ bank account, social media account, working documents, sensitive information can be stolen and other electronic devices can be hacked for illegal actions. For example, in December 2019, a Ring camera was hacked in an eight-year-old girl’s room; the hacker played a song with the lyrics “tiptoe through the window” and then talked with the child, which made her absolutely scared and screamed for her mother. Therefore, no matter how advantageous technology is, it is just a tool to facilitate daily life, and nothing is more important than humans themselves, especially their health and security, so people should reduce their dependence on technology to avoid the serious implications. Given these destructive consequences, the dependence on technology should be reduced to protect human health and privacy.