Technology is a powerful invention and addition to our lives and it affects people’s lives and changes how they learn, think, and communicate. It plays a significant role in society, and now it is very tough to imagine life without technology. But, how does it affect our daily life, school, work, and mental health? From my experience and observations in life with technology, I have realized that technology can be positive and negative depending on how it is used, and how often it is used. There is both opinion and scientific evidence proving both sides of technology’s effects.

According to How Does Technology Impact Student Learning, by Bay Atlantic University, it says, “The use of technology has helped students and teachers create practical and easily-accessible teaching and learning environments. A very important technological impact on education is increased interactivity and class engagement. In addition, better overall comprehension, practical learning, time management, and combined learning methodologies are just some of the impacts technology has had on student learning.” Technology has many benefits when it comes to school life. Now, on the other hand, my encounters with technology in my personal school life have made me believe that technology is harmful and distracting for students. When in a classroom you look around and everybody has a little screen in front of them, eyes glued. If you think about how school life was, say, back in the 1900’s you could see it is very different. Passing notes, skating, chalkboards, fun bright clothing, talking non-stop, and big glasses. The reason for all of these changes: Technology. Passing notes turned into texting, skating turned into driving, chalkboards turned into big white techy boards.

Not only is school life being affected by this evolution of technology, but so is work life. According to “How the Power of Technology Can Improve Work-Life Balance by Sprockets, “The role of technology in work-life balance is to make tasks more efficient for employees so they can effectively accomplish their goals. Technology reduces their need to work overtime, and as a result, improves work-life balance. For example, Buffalo Wild Wings recently launched a robotic chicken wing fryer called “Flippy Wings” at high-volume locations. The solution empowers restaurants to “redeploy team members to more guest-facing functions, improving the guest experience.” So far, results show that food production has increased by 10 to 20% with the robotic fryer, and team members are now able to focus on other daily operations.” Technology is a time saver when it comes to working. On the other not so experiment and evidence-based hand, in my personal opinion, Technology takes away the value of “work” and spending time putting in all your effort and creativity at your job. Nowadays you don’t have as many one on one conversations with customers because there is a screen that will do it ten times more efficiently than you. Drive-throughs are better options as well now, much quicker and people love the aspect that you don’t actually talk to somebody face to face.

In our daily lives, countless things are done by technology and the internet. You turn on the news in the morning, and most of the time a technological clock/alarm is the thing that wakes you up. Without technology, our mornings could arguably be more difficult or challenging. an article, How Technology Affects Our Daily Life by franchisewire.com says, “Technology brings us many benefits, and also brings us great disasters. With the help of technology, we can do very complex tasks very comfortably. It is not wrong to say that technology makes our life much more convenient and comfortable.” Despite technology bringing us to ease to daily tasks, it can be very dangerous in the aspect that it takes away time from people we love. I think that people get way too distracted on phones, TV, ipads, computers, and countless other devices. When distracted, people get disconnected and distant from the people around them. When used in the wrong way technology is not worth the good things it gives us.

The text also states, “ With the help of communication technology, we can communicate with anyone anywhere in the world. Communication also makes life much more convenient and comfortable. We can communicate with anyone and transmit data and share any information by using different devices like smartphones, radio, television, the internet, and E-mails.” Although communication is important and is made easier by technology, there are some disadvantages that come with it. For example, it limits the amount of in-life communication that can occur, people rely more on technology and phone calls and texting than actual face-to-face communication. This is destroying relationships between people and ruins connections that could have been made if technology was not here.

All in all, technology can be proved to be both positive and negative with evidence and experiment-based information. It can also be supported by opinion-based information and personal experience.