The Digital Age: Blessing? Or Curse? Definitely Blessing Though.

After a long time on kittens.com, I soon realized it was way past my bedtime and I should be writing a blog. 

In this day and age, we can get easily distracted by the wonders of the internet. This is now a giant hazard for all college students. In the article "Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction" (Seen Here), students are shown to be spending too much time in the digital world. With all these wonders we have at our disposal, why do they seem so mindless and addicting? I'll admit, I check Facebook often, and I don't usually update statuses or chat often. I just kind of look around, click some stuff, then space out. It's bad. Why do we spend so much time on this stuff? Really? It's mind-boggling. I do it, lots of other people do it, but do we ever question why we automatically type in facebook.com if we're trying to check our emails? (To give credit to a classmate I cannot remember, I overheard this statement in a class discussion somewhere.) Video games are also a giant distraction, causing hours to go by without you even knowing, which I am totally guilty of. 

Students are admitting that they'd be doing better in school if they didn't have the internet as a distraction. However, I think this is really the student's time to shine. It's hypocritical of me to say this, because I got distracted long enough to have about an hour to continue writing my blog. One must try their hardest to become more focused, and taking time away from the distractions that plague us. Try and take yourself out of   an environment that encourages digital distractions. Try the library! Wait, they allow laptops and have computer labs. How about the student center? Same issue there. How about...a bench?

Yes I know benches can still have technology. That's the problem!

The digital world is everywhere. 

You can't escape it! Even if it shortens our attention spans and makes us forget what we're doing, it's everywhere. Some assignments for class are in this online blog! You can access 3G on smart-phones almost everywhere, laptops are portable, and texting is just as bad! Our youth may be absent-minded, make more grammatical errors, and have their GPA's drop as fast as a twitter post (That was me being hip, did it work?), but can they help it? In a world where digital distractions run rampant, where can students go to focus on their work? 

As Nicki Dowling said in the another NY Times article (Here), we have an "Internet dependence." The day we get out of this dependence, the sooner our grades and attention spans will rise up. Though it would be a real bummer to not use the internet. Please don't take it away.