We’ve all heard warnings of the potential downsides to our society’s dependence on technology. We’ve becoming so connected and, honestly, addicted to our devices that it’s beginning to affect our sleep, focus and attentiveness, and overall serenity and happiness.
While technology can be a wonderful way to stay connected to friends and relatives that live far as well as helping you stay organized and remain productive, it can also decrease your productivity, lower your learning retention, and cause you to become a little disconnected from the world around you.
In this article, we’ll explore the many ways in which technology is damaging your serenity and overall happiness.
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How is Technology Affecting Your Sleep?
Most people nowadays use their phones to pass the time between lying down for bed and falling asleep, replacing the age-old tradition of reading to wind down before bed. However, they don’t stop to think how that will affect your sleep.
You’ve likely heard your mother or grandmother fuss that watching television can encourage bad sleeping habits; well it’s the same way with cell phones and tablets, as it’s the LED screens and bright lights that are causing a lot of the basic problems.
These screens are the same reason that it’s a problem to sit close to the television or stare at it or a computer screen for long periods of time each day.
Recent studies show that 95% of Americans use a phone or tablet within an hour before bed. This causes them to get less sleep at night, making them cranky and distracted the next day.
What’s worse is that ten percent of the huge American population leave the sound on on their cell phones at night, causing them to be woken up at odd points in their sleep cycle, resulting in more restless sleep which causes a decrease in focus and attentiveness throughout the day, a decrease in learning retention, and an elevated and agitated sensitivity and mood.
How is Technology Affecting Your Focus and Attentiveness?
We already mentioned how our technology affecting our sleep habits can lead to a decrease in focus, attentiveness, and learning retention, but there are other ways our technology is affecting our focus and attentiveness.
For starters, the more dependent we are on our technology and the more connected we are to it, the more distracted we become from the world around us. We lose focus in what we’re doing, attentiveness in the task at hand, and ability to maintain productivity because we’re too concerned with potential notifications and updates.
Technology has also caused us to grow accustomed to a fast-paced source for endless entertainment, making us get bored with our tasks much quicker and shortening our attention span. This causes us to be less productive during our average work day and easily distracted.
What Does Any of this Have to Do with Serenity and Happiness?
There are a lot of components and factors that contribute to a person’s overall happiness and what makes them calm and serene. If you’re struggling to maintain productivity at work or to maintain learning retention, it can certainly affect your overall happiness and stress level.
In addition to that, being constantly weighed down by concerns of the latest updates, your phone’s notifications, or the latest news can affect your overall serenity. It can make it hard for you to focus, meditate, relax, or sleep.
While minimizing your use of technology is the ideal course of action, simply avoiding using it within an hour prior to going to bed.
It’s painfully obvious how dependent on technology our society has become in recent years. We’ve all been warned of the potential repercussions of this fact, and yet we still use our technology at alarming amounts. This affects our productivity, sleep, focus, and learning retention, then seeps into affecting our overall happiness and ability to achieve serenity.
