How Have Computers Changed America

Phone in hand and texting, the fifteen-year-old girl quickly stands up and steps onto her bus; a few stops later, she looks up and sees unrecognizable roads. Lost, she speaks to the bus driver, only to discover she had gotten on the wrong bus because of her lack of attention. Elsewhere, two teenage boys, boxed up in their rooms, sit messaging each other all night rather than inviting each other over for a sleepover. Today we refer to our world as one in the “age of technology (Little).” Average Americans spend four to five hours, or a third of their day, on the internet, mainly on social sites or using their phone for entertainment, with only a much smaller percentage of time on the internet spent on more useful endeavors, like research. Consumed …show more content…
In 1946, computer development began. Initially, people only had the ability to communicate or to keep track of specific documents and to have a technology to code things. Since then, the phone and the computer have developed and then re-developed so that they fit in backpacks and jean pockets. Technology, not only used for its original sole purpose, now has flown far beyond that. Phones have gained screens, so that one may have entertainment. They have turned into nearly everything someone would want to have: a calculator, a camera, a flashlight, a book, an entertainment zone, a social media zone, and a reminder for everything a person would forget. Before modern technology, people actually needed to use their brains; some learned to retell their entire history, while others memorized poems, lists, stories, and songs; now, everything exists on the internet, only a finger-touch away. Why walk all the way across the street when one has the internet? With these new developments Americans have stepped into a world that completely depends on this new …show more content…
This new technology has affected the whole world, but it has especially affected Americans. Young Americans have grown up with this new technology that has damaged many, especially teenagers. Now, many younger kids know more about phones and computers than their parents do. Americans, so dependent on electricity and new technology, find that there is nothing they can do about it when it fails. There have been a few incidents where technology has failed. One example happened in August 2003, when a widespread power outage occurred from Detroit to New York without electricity. “Thousands were locked out of hotel rooms and people were unable to purchase necessary items due to the fact that credit card machines were down. Communication through emails, phones, radio’s and TV’s were nonexistent, leaving 50 million [people] ‘in the dark’ for the biggest and longest blackout in American history (Kaufman).” Technology has created a world, carrying America’s new society with it. Teenagers, found almost everywhere with their phones, cannot cease to text back and forth with friends, because they find it easier to socialize through internet, rather than face to face, thus not growing in the needed social developments that would help them later in life. They do not recognize the awkward silences

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