by Chris Shamati

Created on: September 28, 2009

Technology, waste of time? Hell yes, how often during the day have you stopped working to look up something on the Internet to only be sidetracked moments later by the latest news story? The innocent desire to see what you missed during Barack's latest speech is quickly lost when you see "Kanye at MTV" leading to frenzied google searches to see exactly what he said and all the juicy details concerned with it. In addition to all the distractions on the web today, there is the new threat from video games and social networking sites which are becoming ever more addicting. In the case of video games we see games like World of Warcraft which demands massive amounts of time investment to progress anywhere in the game. When we look at social networking sites we see all of those ridiculous games that we swore we would never play yet 2 hours later still are (Farmville anyone).

While I feel that video games and social networking sites ARE the main wastes of time to the majority of us who have a hard time tearing ourselves away (myself included) I still believe that even when necessary in today's times they lose more time than they supposedly save. Take for example sites that schools use to post homework assignments and to host discussions amongst students. These sites are inherently down whenever a student needs it and thus forces them to check again at a different time, just giving even more excuses to get side tracked.

In fact its not just the Internet and video gaming that's taking up time, its those long hours spent in front of the TV watching the latest episode of Lost or Gossip Girl that is taking away from the lives of people today. If we were to take away all these "advances in technology" and reduce us to working in the fields, we would be a more productive society. We are living in a materialistic world in which technology is just one more thing to flaunt and strut about with. After all how much time do YOU spend on the computer or latest HALO game? (I know I spend way to much as is) If we were to add up all the time that we spend on the computer, even reading this poorly written article for example, we see that we have wasted time that we could have been using for something more productive.

Although technology is a waste of time, it is not our faults that we have fallen so helplessly heads over heels for it. We have been taught that technology is good and that to say other wise is hearsay. However, believing that technology is good and nothing else is wrong, if anything technology is a double edged sword. For all those minutes you saved, typing up and emailing that letter to a friend rather than mailing in via post office, you probably were browsing the web looking up the hottest youtube vids or surfing the web. How can we claim that technology is a time saver if even when given free time, we merely waste it on pointless activities?

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