The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Ways to Use Technology

It is a given that technology has impacted the world and the way that people conduct themselves as well as communicate with others in their everyday lives.  This includes when a person using said technology wanders around a city. 

People walking in streets while using their smartphones and other technology has become so common that the term “twalking” was invented.  Twalking, meaning texting and walking, can create dangerous situations due to twalkers lack of awareness of what is happening around them. 

Technology has improved city life; however, it has paved the way for individuals to become more lonely, engage in dangerous activities, and become addicted to and dependent on their smartphones.  What happens when we twalk so much that the world around us completely fades out of our minds?  What happens if technology isolates and harms people more than helps them?

I arrived in Boston for my first semester of college in the winter of 2023 and pulled out my smartphone for assistance with directions.  The city was not my home yet, nor somewhere I could easily navigate without my Google Maps application.  As time passed, I realized I was not the only wanderer using technology to get around the city. 

Everyone seemed dependent on anything with an internet connection.  Everywhere I looked in Boston, cars passed, planes soured above, advertisements lit up and noises played from buildings.  People rode by on electric bikes, and twalkers walked past people bumping into them while using their smartphones.

In the smaller town where I grew up in Southern California, I was not used to so much traffic distracting me when walking from place to place.  Although cars still drove on the streets and buildings still emitted sounds, the hindrances that technology caused on life in my hometown were a lot more minimal. 

Taking the taxi from the airport to my dorm building for the first time, I rode the elevator to the fifth floor of my apartment and noticed that not a single person said hello.  Strangers in this city were more interested in living in the cloud than being friendly to others in front of them.  The Uber driver spoke on the phone to someone else during the car ride, the security guard at the front desk of the dorm building simply waved me by while looking at his phone, and my fellow students riding the elevator on the way up to our respective rooms had headphones in.

I was a person living in this city, and I was a fellow student at this university, but I felt that without my two suitcases containing all of my belongings and my smartphone, I was alone.

New to isolation

Researching what my life would be like in a big city, I came across an article by Kathleen Stansberry for the Pew Research Center titled “5 Future Concerns about the Future of Digital Life.”  I expected that I would feel less lonely living in a city with thousands of people, but I soon found out that I wasn’t the only one feeling isolated from others due to technologies hold on individuals.  In the article, a principal engineer named Elliot Lear said the internet “has also isolated us from our local communities.”

Maybe because I was new to the city and its way of life, I took my isolation more personally.  Perhaps this was just a norm that I would have to become accustomed to by living here, but at that moment, I hoped it would not be.  At that moment, I realized how frightened I was by my newly found isolation. 

Anxious and scared about my first interactions in the city and research regarding people’s technological behavior, I wandered out of my dorm room’s small, safe space and into the big, scary city, hoping that something would prove my hypothesis incorrect.  I stepped outside my single room and into the hallway of my three-bedroom suite, which housed four people.  I saw one of my roommates and dared to try to introduce myself, but he couldn’t hear me.  Instead, he passed by with an iPad and headphones in his ears without even knowing I was there. 

According to the same article from the Pew Research Center, Dalsie Baniala, Telecommunications and Radiocommunications Regulator of Vanuatu, says, “digital life will cause no more human-to-human interactions but human machine-to-machine. Digital life creates no more human senses.” 

“Maybe I can’t control how technology isolates, endangers, and creates addictions for others.  Maybe I can only stop myself from letting it do that to me.”

I wondered how my roommate’s lack of awareness of my existence was possible and if I had ever accidentally given others the same treatment.  I asked myself if I had ever made others feel like ghosts in a place that was supposed to be their own homes.  Had technology ever taken away my human senses?  I knocked on his door to try again to assert my presence in his life, but his headphones had taken away his sense of hearing, and he gave no response.  I realized that he had isolated himself not only with his headphones but also isolated me by impairing my ability to meet him in this new place. 

All my previous visits to Boston and teachings about life at Boston University could not have possibly prepared me for this new way of life.   I did not understand how individuals could live with more interactions with technology than with actual face-to-face people.  

Leaving my building, I stepped outside into the snowy streets of Boston, hoping a walk would help calm my anxiety.  After all, Virginia Woolf wrote in “Street Haunting: A London Adventure” that “the greatest pleasure of town life in winter [is] rambling the streets of London.” The same had to be true of Boston — or so I thought. 

While Woolf could wander in the streets of London as a fun activity, everyone around me seemed to walk with a purpose instead of wandering around for the sake of having a good time.  Exploring a new place, I instinctively pulled out my phone to find nice paths to walk and places to go.  How was I supposed to find an interesting place to walk in this gigantic city without using my phone?  How could Woolf have possibly just wandered around, not knowing where she was going?  Instead of finding out what was out there like Woolf did or communicating with another person, I limited my creativity and own thoughts by simply asking Google. 

Dependent on Google

Journalist Chelsea Greenwood wrote an article in Business Insider titled “9 Subtle Ways Technology is Making Humanity Worse.”  Greenwood wrote in the article that Entrepreneur Beth Haggerty commented that technology “limits pure creative thought, at times, because we are developing habits to Google everything to quickly find an answer.” 

I thought about this not just as a person but also as a writer.  How often did I turn to Google to find an idea for something to write about?  How often did I have an original, creative thought without turning to Google for help?  I realized I asked Google for help far more than I used to.  I thought about my journey to Boston and how, every step of the way, I used technology to get to where I was going.  Instead of having a physical plane ticket, I used one on my phone, and instead of hailing a taxi from the airport to my dorm, I ordered an Uber.  I even needed Google to find out the location of my new home at Boston University.  I wondered if I could’ve figured out how to do all those things without technology.  I wondered if, as the article said, I had become dependent on my technology.  I discovered that I needed to stop using the internet for help on everyday tasks and put faith in myself to become self-sufficient.  

As my semester began and my reality started to settle in, my anxiety over the new life I had just begun only increased as I realized that technology did not only affect people’s self-sufficiency and communication with others but also their safety in the streets.  Our school campus was built to be incorporated seamlessly into the city, and, as a result, students had to walk across busy streets flooded with different forms of transportation.  I was caught off guard riding my electric scooter to class while listening to music when someone twalking went into the bike lane to cross the street without looking.  I immediately yelled at the twalker and warned him to pay more attention. 

I looked around and saw people looking at me as if I was the one who should’ve apologized.  Because of their reactions, I attempted to imagine myself in his shoes.  Was I also using my technology irresponsibly?  Was I going too fast and not paying enough attention to my surrounding by listening to music on my electric scooter?  Still, why should he assume that he could just cross the street safely without paying attention?  Although I apologized and felt that I had been in the wrong, I still wondered who was at fault.  I understood the walker’s perspective and the onlooker’s attitude toward my overreaction. Still, I had just been peacefully going about my day when someone distracted by technology almost caused an accident that could have harmed both of us. 

I was right to yell at the twalker to pay more attention. Still, I also learned that my technologically-driven actions created a dangerous environment since I was also at fault for listening to music and going too fast in the bike lane.  I remembered the New York Times article I had read my first night in Boston.  In it, Jim Steyer, the chief executive of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that evaluates tech products and media for families, confirmed my perspective by saying, “you have distracted pedestrians and distracted drivers, so it’s the double whammy.”  I realized that everyone, including myself, is guilty of becoming distracted by technology in situations that can become dangerous and life-threatening exceptionally quickly.  

Addicted to devices

I decided to go on with my day.  Walking into class, people didn’t even look up from their devices to greet the professor or me.  They were so distracted and addicted to what was happening on their screens that they barely even noticed when the class began.  I looked around to see that some people were on their phones texting, some were watching television on their computers, and others were doing homework for other classes on iPads.  I once again found myself thinking back to the article I read at the start of my journey at Boston University and how it explained that “addictive behavior is becoming preoccupied with smartphone use when you should be doing something else.” 

These students were all addicted to their devices.  Trying to avoid the distraction, I took out my computer to take notes.  I typed up the bullet notes the professor had listed on the PowerPoint and wrote down most of what he was saying since it expanded on those bullet points.  

I reasonably assumed that I was the least distracted person in the class and had written down all the information I would need to study for the class’s upcoming exam.  Yet, every few seconds, I would check the clock on my computer screen’s top right-hand side.  I would see an email or Instagram notification pop up and instinctively check it as well.  It made me think about what information I had missed when looking at these distractions and why couldn’t I simply ignore them.  Then, I looked to my right and realized that a fellow student was taking notes.  His notes were almost identical to mine; however, instead of using a computer with distracting notifications, his notes were written in a paper notebook with a pen.  Not only did I realize that, unlike my note-taking software, his note-taking platform had no clock and no notifications to distract him, but I also saw all of the information he had written down, which included notes that I didn’t have.  These were notes that I probably missed out on taking because of the distractions I faced while using my computer.  

“I realized that everyone, including myself, is guilty of becoming distracted by technology in situations that can become dangerous and life-threatening exceptionally quickly.”

After the class ended, I walked down the street and saw the all too familiar twalkers running into their usual issues because of their distractions and thought, why can’t people, myself included, just ignore their phones?  This entire time I had judged my peers for something that I was also guilty of.  Although I had been distracted by my technology to a lesser degree than some of my peers that watched television in class, I still couldn’t stop myself from checking on notifications as they appeared on my computer.  I realized that I, too, had become addicted to my technology.  

In his article, Brian Chen suggests how we can all take control of our technology to stop our addictive tendencies toward it.  Melanie Greenberg, a clinical psychologist and the author of “The Stress-Proof Brain,” says that before using technology, people should ask themselves, “Is this the most important thing for me to be doing right now?  Am I controlling my destiny, or am I letting tech control it?  Am I going to cause myself harm?”  

By following this model and by “reducing access to [my] device” by putting it into my backpack instead of my pocket, I can help to stop my addiction and isolation to technology, which could stop me from being harmed or harming others.  The article also focused on how people could go “into phone’s settings and switch off notifications for all apps.” 

Technology as last resort

Using these tools or switching to taking notes in a physical notebook with a pen, I realized that I could become better prepared for school and life in the future.  Greenberg’s advice was to stray away from technology whenever possible and to use it as a last resort.  Following that advice, I now recognize that we should not use technology if it means isolating ourselves and making the world more dangerous.  We should only use technology to gain better insights about the world and only if we are ready not to let it distract us.  Until we can accomplish those things, I discovered that maybe it would be better for us all to follow my classmate and Greenberg’s examples and not use technology unless necessary.  

The next day, I walked to classes instead of taking my electric scooter.  The streets were still busy, and the twalkers were still distracted, but I was calmer and more aware.  I noticed turkeys waddling around in Marsh Plaza, I saw the blue sky and took it in, and I thought about my homework instead of the lyrics to the music I would normally listen to.  I looked at the bike lane and saw others riding as quickly as they could to get to class, and I sighed with relief, knowing that I was no longer like them, knowing that I was taking control of my day and my own life.  

I am happy that I came to school and live in a city like Boston.  I am glad that I saw how much technology influenced my life and the lives of everyone around me.  Now that I use technology only when necessary, I know the area and the information required to study for my classes better than ever before.  Yet, sometimes I still catch myself going into my backpack and taking out my phone when crossing the street and when a professor lectures in class.  Maybe trying to have self-control and limiting my technological usage is the best that I can do to ensure that I do not let said technology isolate me and harm my life and instead be a tool to make it better. 

Although I know that technology will still be a distraction in some aspects of my life, I also realize that I may limit it as much as possible and make the most of its uses.  I might find someone else that does not want to be isolated nor let the world fade entirely out of their minds due to their interest in what is going on on their phones.  I might stop a dangerous situation stemming from technological distractions from occurring instead of causing one.  I might gain more knowledge from note-taking and accomplish more in my day by not checking my notifications and time left in class. 

Maybe I can’t control how technology isolates, endangers, and creates addictions for others.  Maybe I can only stop myself from letting it do that to me.

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