Alexander Vo and Kylie Wheeler, Guest writers
If you woke up this morning and checked Instagram, liked a Facebook post or even sent a Tweet, congratulations; you’re part of the 74 percent of men and women who use social media. According to a study done by the Pew Research Center, 40 percent of cell phone owners use social media applications, 28 percent of whom use daily.
Technology has become somewhat of a double-edged sword; it makes our lives easier, yet not without its own shortcomings. Smartphone apps serve literally any purpose we see fit, from messaging a friend to tracking our daily calorie intake— all in the swipe and tap of a button. With a rising industry of smartphone apps, a growing concern is whether or not littering our phones with these apps makes us productive or are we simply becoming too complacent with our mobile devices?
It’s a trend we see often in society and we barely take the time to critically think about the amount of apps we download onto our phones. The truth of the matter is that we want to rely on them. Apps give us that shoulder to lean on in a pinch whenever we need help.
“Too much good to see the bad,” senior Noble Hauser said. “[Apps] revolutionize the way every day can happen. Connecting us to everyone and everything.”
Likewise it can also make us over-reliant on them as well. Imagine following the directions of a GPS app only to get completely lost when it points the you into a wall or worse, the middle of nowhere. Use caution and common sense before heedlessly relying on an app, you might just be shutting the door on reality.
So do we swipe on or off? The answer lies in the perfect medium; all in moderation. Apps function great as a resource, but don’t depend on them wholly as your own personal life coach. Instead of being buried in apps, it’s high time to kick some of the clutter to the curb.
