The wonders of technology, NASA, HS2, and being trolled on the internet…

Many people believe that modern technology is an amazing thing, which in many ways it is. But when a child is exposed to social media and chat forums this opens up a whole world of danger, addiction and loss of daily exercise. 

My first point is addiction. Many children find themselves unable to be away from their screen, this leads to them not getting enough daily exercise which leads to obesity and sometimes cancer. This is horrific and yet we find different sights working to make modern technology more addictive. Did you know that the sound you get when you send an iMessage automatically makes you want to send another one? Or the time between each episode on Netflix is so quick you don’t have time to decide to do something else? In fact it was on the news a couple of years ago that a girl was playing the very addictive game ‘Fortnite’ she stayed up all night and didn’t even stop to go to the loo! You might say that once and a while is okay, which quite often it is, but this can turn into something greater. 

My next point is health problems. Many children sleep with their phones by their bed. This can cause an immense amount of damage, sleeping by your phone is bad for vision, sleep and can cause cancer, diabetes and incredibly bad nightmares. Going back to my point on sleep loss, the reason for this is not only the blue light that is emitted but also the fact that your brain is alert waiting for it to ping. Using your smartphone too much is not only dangerous mentally, it is also dangerous physically. This doesn't just mean it causes obesity, which in fact it does, but some people are so immersed in their phones that they can’t see when they're putting themselves in actual danger. My mum was driving down our road one day and a teenage girl with her head buried in her phone stepped out right in front of her, not looking where she was going, she was almost run over because of a phone! 

My final point is losing contact with family and friends, you may say that whilst they are on their phone they are chatting with others, this is not as good as talking face to face. Mainly because online words and emojis can get misinterpreted and can cause unnecessary fights. It has been scientifically proven that hearing someone else's voice is good for the brain so even if you can’t see each other, talking over the landline is better than texting, this also means things can’t get misinterpreted 

So in conclusion I believe that children should not be allowed to spend time on their smartphones until they're old enough to control the amount of time they spend on them.