IELTS Part 2 - Advantages and disadvantages of new technologies

Task: New technologies have changed the way children spend their free time. Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?

It is true that with the appearance of new technologies, children nowadays spend more time with the latest technological devices. In my opinion, this change can bring both advantages and disadvantages, depending on the parents’ guidance and supervision. By ‘guidance and supervision’, I mean how the parents teach their children what to watch, what to play, how much time should be spent, etc.

On the one hand, without proper guidance and supervision, new technologies may badly affect children in more than one way. First, parents allowing their children to use those devices for too long may lead to health problems in the kids. Those who keep their eyes glued to the screen too much will eventually suffer due to eye-strain. Moreover, spending too much time with those devices means that the kids will have less time playing outside and doing exercises, which can lead to an unhealthy lifestyle that can affect them later in life. Second, the Internet is a place with many things that children should not have been allowed to see yet, things that could affect them mentally, such as pornography and violent stuff. There is a chance that the children will find out these stuff if they are allowed to surf the Internet freely.

On the other hand, under proper guidance and supervision, the new technologies can be utilised for many purposes. They encourage children to spent their free time on broadening their knowledge, thus allowing the children’s talents to be discovered early, as evidenced by those 9-year-old geniuses that work for Apple, IBM, etc. Another reason is that the Internet gives children more opportunities to make friends, both friends from the same country and from others, using social networks like Facebook or Twitter. Consequently, it encourages children to keep a habbit of developing a network of friends, which will be an essential skill when they are older.

In conclusion, new techonologies have both advantages and disadvantages. It is the parents’ responsibility to guide their children so that they can bring out the advantages of those technologies.

(340 words).