Making us smarter

In a video on YouTube titled “Look Up,” filmmaker Gary Turk encourages viewers to “look up” from their phones so they don’t miss what life has to offer.

In spoken word poetry, Turk talks about how lonely we are together, how he can’t stand the sound of a quiet train where no one is talking to each other. “We’re a generation of idiots, smartphones and dumb people,” he claims. Eventually, he tells the story about someone — an everyman who could easily be the viewer — who misses out on meeting his soul mate and having an amazing life because he was too busy looking at his phone.

I have news for you. All of the above purported fears are being blown way out of proportion. Technology is not ruining us, and we’re going to be fine.

Nearly 50 million views and thousands of agreeing comments prove how dramatic we’ve become about the supposed scourge of social media and technology. Social media is making us lonely. Textspeak is ruining our spelling, grammar and language as a whole. Being on our phones all the time is stopping us from experiencing the wonderful outdoors and interacting with others. I could go on, but you’ve heard the rest.

First off, we’re not dumber. We have more information than ever before at our fingertips. We keep in contact with our friends in more creative and interactive ways. Our communication has become streamlined, so our in-person conversations become more meaningful and enriched with the knowledge of what we’ve texted, snapchatted and tweeted each other.

And, even when we’re not learning on our phones, our minds are constantly working. We’ve all spent hours playing Angry Birds and Candy Crush, but this is no different from playing hours of Nintendo and Gameboy when we were younger. And, just because we play games on our phones, it doesn’t mean we’re gradually becoming stupider. For every game, there’s an education app that people can use to improve their brains, work out, get enough sleep, etc. Technology is making it easier to track our brains and health, and we’re the better for it.

Yes, sales of newspapers and books have decreased, but we still have bestsellers and controversial magazine covers. We haven’t stopped consuming the traditional media that made us smart in the first place. We can read online magazines and e-books, and newspaper articles are enhanced by multimedia content online.

Technology is a tool. It can be used for good or evil or morally neutral activities. For the majority of us, it’s good. My cousin is teaching himself Japanese with a learning app on his phone. My extended family can always keep in touch with each other with WhatsApp. My sister has made friends around the world through Twitter. My friends and I send each other pins on Pinterest. I listen to NPR, read ebooks and find out what’s on TV tonight. Anytime I have a question, chances are high that Google can instantly answer it. And it’s all on our phones.

We are talking and communicating now more than ever before, and this isn’t overwhelming us. On the contrary, it’s helping us grow as people. After all, there’s no excuse for being misinformed when you have the world’s information at your grasp. It’s almost like magic. Yes, some people may be a little too distracted by their phones, but that doesn’t mean that phones are ruining us. Life is getting better, and, since we don’t have to worry about artificial intelligence becoming sentient, let’s enjoy it.

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