Technology is the future and kids are the future. Teenagers love to use technology because it is like breathing for a teenager’s soul. It is said that an average of teens receive more than one thousand seven hundred texts every month. Some have said texting is good for you, but others have said is mind numbing for the teenagers mind to spend all their time texting. Texting is just an easier way to say something rather than call. Parents don’t understand texting, but they feel it is taking away their teen or teens from them. Technology has been advancing over time. If we go back to when there wasn’t technology would we be able to survive. Technology has helped make our societies better. Sometimes though technology is not always a good thing to use. For instance, some teens when they eat at the dinner table are not even talking to their family they are just texting. To teens texting is just a way to get away from their family. Other is to talk to a friend that has moved away or gone to a different school. Anyways when we use technology too much, we get away from social life in the real world.

There have been debates saying teenagers don’t spend enough time with their families due to excessive use of technology. As Krystle Song says in her article, “For some people, the main appeal of the iPod is that it preoccupies you so you are no longer obligated to interact with uncontrollable factors of everyday life…Visible from a good distance away, white earphones signal one thing to most people: don’t bother trying to talk to me. IPods are a major deterrent signal to conversation, with it becoming increasingly acceptable to converse while still listening to the iPod” (1). She is saying that an iPod can stray a person away from life. For example, the earphones on an iPod tell people not to even try talking to me. You are just straying a person away. Another article says the average non-internet users spend five times more at social events and with friends and family then an Internet user (Nie and Hillygus). Now if you tell me that look like it is better to not use technology for social activities. For instance, a girl named Rachel texts an average of 36,660 texts per month. That is plenty of texts but yet she still does plenty of social activities and hangs with friends. Another girl named Rena also texts, but Rena texts an average of 14, 328 texts per month. Yet she still has time for social activities and friends. Rena says that she mostly texts to get away from her parents. If you have a teenager how many texts per moth do they send? Are they spending enough time with their friends and family? Are they doing well in school and communicating with you?

Others say the Internet gives socially awkward people the ability to feel more comfortable and make it easier to keep in touch with friends. I say that is disagreeable to me in my opinion. First of all there are internet predators out their looking for kids to talk to. The Internet is not always safe to use. Anybody could have a fake identity on the internet. Many of them just want to meet kids and harass them. Second, the Internet really doesn’t help socially awkward people interact with others because most of them have not probably talked to their family in years. They spend so much time on the Internet they probably forgot what outside looked like. Obviously this article gets it saying, “Technology use can lead to misery and loneliness” (Affonso 1). Also Affonso says, “Data showed that as people in this sample used the Internet more, they reported keeping up with fewer friends. They also reported spending less time talking with their families, experiencing more daily stress, and feeling more lonely and depressed. These results occurred even though interpersonal communication was their most important reason for using the Internet” (1). He is saying that the more time we use technology the more time we would feel depressed, lazy, stressed, and lonely.
In Jen Harris article it says, “There are those who claim that the iPod does more to unite people than it does to divide them. Two of those people are Lisa and Jonny Rocket, the founders of Playlist, a community of sorts for devotees of the iPod” (1). Well this is selective sampling. Instead of asking just two people who are the founders of playlist they should have probably asked others on the question.
Technology use can lead you away from social life in the real world. One is because the average non-internet user is five times more social with family and friends than an internet user. Another is the average teenager send one thousand seven hundred texts per month. Finally, they are not getting enough social time with their families. Ultimately teenagers are spending a lot of their time in everyday life texting. Maybe teenagers are not spending enough time with their family and friends. What has America’s technology come to for teenagers?