The Impact and Importance of Technology on High School Students Like Me

The incessant growth of modern technology makes it crystal clear that life is moving into a new chapter. Nowadays, technology plays a vital part in modern society. Technology is the core reason the world is developing day by day. Technology helps our lives become more convenient compared to the past. People have mobile phones, computers, washing machines and other technologies that make daily chores and works become easier. For instance, people used paper letters for communication in the past. They had to send a paper letter that usually would take many days to arrive.

Now, they can communicate with each other through text messages, phone calls or in social media like Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Moreover, people used to wash their dirty clothes by using their hands, whereas, nowadays everybody cleans their clothes by using a washing machine which will save much of their time to do anything else. These technologies really helped and changed in our lives today. Some may hold the opinion that life in the lower tech day was better, but I strongly believe that modern technology is making life easier because it saves time, makes communication easier, and helps people find out information more efficiently.

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Personally, as a high school student who lived far away from home, technology really helped me in communication and education. Since I was 14 years old, I lived with my friends at the hostel provided by the school because my home was very far from the school. My high school was located in the southern part of Malaysia while my home was located in the northern part.

It takes about six hours of driving to arrive at my school. During that time, I faced many difficulties, especially in communication. If I would like to make a call to my parents, I had to wait such a long time. This is mainly because the public phones that were provided at my school were very limited. All the students had to queue first to take their turn to call. For my classmates and me, it was really inconvenient and wasted much of my time just to wait for one call, but now with the creation of the mobile phone, it really helps me to communicate with my parents. I am even farther from them now, studying at a college in the United States, but now I can communicate with them by texting or calling anytime that I want. It also saves my time because I do not need to queue to call my parents.

Secondly, the internet is very helpful for me as a student in this generation. This is because the current education system is designed to facilitate deeper learning than before; the purpose of the system is to develop a high class student with high knowledge and high thinking skills. This new education system requires the students to do more research than before. In the past, I encountered many difficulties in searching for information for my research. I had to go to the library again and again and usually spent the whole day at the library to search for the information from books. It was quite hard for me to find the information from a million books at the library. But now it is easier for me to search for any information from the internet. The internet provides much information in terms of videos, images or words from a variety of sources. I just need to type, click and search for any information any time that I want.

I have a father who worked as a lecturer at a college. I talked to him about his past life when the technology was simpler. During that time, my father faced many difficulties in transporting himself to his college, recording the administration data and researching materials to teach. In January 1984, my father began his first job as a lecturer at a college. He had just graduated a few months earlier from the Sultan Idris Teachers Institute before he got hired to work as a lecturer at Penang College. The college was located in the middle town of Penang, which required about 30 minutes by foot or 15 minutes by bus from my father's house. He told me that every day he would wake up early in the morning to catch the bus to his college; otherwise, he had to walk to the college. During that time, cars were very expensive and he did not have enough money to buy a car. Other than that, he had to use pen and paper to record all the data required to do his job.

He wrote all the important data like his lectures, student achievement records, student attendance and other student information about students and lecturers on the papers. It was inconvenient and hard for him because it took much of his time to write all the data. Sometimes his table got messy with all the papers too.

The most difficult part was he had to go to the library many times to search all the materials that he would need to teach in the class. In the past, materials were very limited and very hard to find. The only place to get all the materials was the library. So, every weekend, my father would go to the library to look for the materials that he could use to teach in the class.

“But today everything has changed, people had been served with the advancement of technologies like car to travel anywhere they would like to, computers to save all the information from the databases and internet” said my father. Technology really has changed our lives today from the past. There is a huge difference in the ways we live now than before because of the technology. My father also totally agreed with the statement "technology makes life easier than in lower tech day.” This is because, with the invention of technologies, we can save our energy and finish our works in a shorter time. In contrast, some may hold opinion that life in the lower tech day was better. The main reason is because they think that it is easier to complete their works without using the technology. I asked my professor, Kate Goschen, about her current job that required her to use the technology. She said that "As a teacher, it takes me much more time to grade essays online, to set up a course or gradebook online, and to communicate with my students online that it took in the old days." As a matter of fact, everyone has different opinions about technology. Some may think that technology really helps them to complete their works; however, some may hold opinion that technology makes their works become more difficult than before. It depends on themselves how they think about the technology.

Nowadays, technology is being implemented in almost every part of our lives especially in medicine. Advancement of technology in the field of science has also helped society to increase their own health care. Portal technology, for examples, gives any patients access to their individual health information with an internet connection. Jeff Sturman, the partner of Franklin, Tenn-based Cumberland Consulting Group, says that “This type of technology allows patients to become more closely involved and better educated about their care.” (qtd. in Jayanthi). Portal technology allows patients to communicate with the doctors about their health and access their own medical records. This situation proves that with the advancement of technology, people can always take care of their own health wherever they are without need go to the medical center to get the treatment.

Despite all the advantages of the advancement technology that I already outlined above, technology also has disadvantages to the earlier forms. Firstly, technology tends to isolate people from the society. People now to spend much of their time using social networks, playing video games, and watching online movies rather than making some new friends. Technology has also displaced the way we communicate with each other. Now, people can easily communicate with their friends through Facebook, Skype and Instagram. They prefer to make online friends rather than face to face friends. Unconsciously, by doing all of that, they start to neglect their real life and isolate themselves from the society.  Next, modern technology has diminished job opportunities. Nowadays, robots are replacing humans to do many jobs, especially in industry. Many firms use the robots in their industries to accelerate the production. This technology helps the firms to generate large amounts of money in a short time and provide the best service for their customers, but on other hand, it will also increase the rate of unemployment in this world. For example, automated call centers have replaced human jobs to greet callers and direct them to any department that can help them.

In contrast, modern technology also had increase the job opportunities in digital jobs such as programmers, IT specialists, and other people are needed to create and maintain robots and everything else in the digital world. Yet, these type of jobs require education while old factory jobs could be learned on the job without a college education.

Finally, modern technology has reduced human creativity. The uses of calculators in education have reduced our own creativity. We can see that a student tends to use the calculator to solve the simple mathematical equations, instead of using their brain to calculate. This will affect the way the students thinks and reduce the level of creativity of a student In a nutshell, I believe that technology makes our lives easier than before, although there are also cons about the effect of technology. It depends on how people use the technology.

People should learn to control themselves while using these modern technologies so that they can overcome the bad effects of technology. Technological advancement has really changed the way people learn, communicate and work. It solves many problems that revolve in our lives such as communication, transportation and education. Modern technology helps people to save much of their time because their works become easier than before. People should be thankful because the invention of technology makes our life convenient and comfortable.