When technology landed on the common man’s doorstep, we all rejoiced the simplicity and efficiency it introduced into our lives. We suddenly had the power of the world in our palms, making us feel Godly. In the course of time, in our pursuit of becoming invincible and powerful, we forgot to keep a tab on our minds. We literally drew a blank that the mind was the greatest weapon of all which controls us as well as the ones around us.
It is still a bewildering query that why would a person lay a path towards his own destruction? That is when the Silicon Valley employees came out with their theories. The philosophical meaning conveyed by them was, “An individual would consciously never know that he/ she is getting addicted to the technology just like how drug user wouldn’t”. Let us take ourselves for an example. On average, we spend an average of 11 hours on screen and that is almost half our day, out of which 3 hours is on social media. It a widely accepted fact that gargantuan amount of peers ranging at the age 18-24 would rather spend hours on social media websites rather than career-defining websites like Getmyuni;which is an education portal where students can find information relating to colleges and universities in India.
A question that always runs in my mind is, “Why don’t people who create these technologies use it as widely as we use it?”. The simple fact is that a person who makes poison doesn’t consume it. We would make daily resolutions that we are going to reduce our time on screen but end up like the majority of new year resolution people who join gyms and never turn up. A close study into the off-springs of the people who invented these technologies revealed that they were sent to schools where devices were banned and their life revolved around medieval education.
Everything that we use has become so attractive, that we cannot stay away from it. Constantly checking our phones to see a red circle showing the number of messages we have received, and we all think it was just a random idea that we have colors portrayed like that. However, based on research it was proven that red was a trigger color and it would induce people to interact with it more often.
The mentality of getting a lot of appreciation in the form of likes on social media, the user-interfaces that keeps us glued to the piece of technology, etc, have all played a trivial puzzle with our mind that we are unable to keep away from it. The entire data about us, our behavioral patterns, our cravings, etc., are indirectly collected by the apps we use by analyzing our usage patterns and statistics.
They are then used for advertising strategies which make us fall prey to such tempting ads because unconsciously we are fond of it. Maybe it’s time to realize who has to be sitting in the pilot’s seat. Technology in a controlled usage is a gift but when in excess, from our natural paths we always drift.