Hello Class, Today I am here to talk to you all about how while technology is a

gift to society, it also has significant flaws that we don't have enough awareness
about.

Technology has been a huge benefit to things like healthcare, entertainment, and
accessibility to services such as banks, GPS, social media, and so much more. While
these are all huge benefits to all of us, they do not outweigh the problems that
technology brings with it. Technology as a whole has many flaws, and today I will
shine some light on some of these issues, starting with the most common problem,
Addiction.

Addiction is a widespread problem across the globe. 83% of Americans feel uneasy
when they leave their phone at home while they go out, along with 43% of Americans
claiming that their phone is their most valuable possession. Roughly about one in
every eight people face tech addiction. With the population of the USA being at
roughly 330 million, this means about 41 million people in the USA alone experience
tech addiction.

While tech addiction does not sound like a big deal at all, it in fact is. One of
the most common issues that come bundled with tech addiction is depression. With
the younger generation all having mobile phones and utilizing them for on average
seven and a half hours a day, the total number of cases of depression is rising
faster than ever. Many teens fall victim to mobile phone addiction because of the
minuscule amount of awareness surrounding it.

90% of people including myself have experienced Phantom Vibration Syndrome, which
is the phenomenon in which people think their phone vibrated when it actually
didn't. This is one of the most telltale signs of addiction to your phone.

Apart from addiction, there are so many more health issues that technology brings.
Another common problem that common users of technology experience is improper sleep
patterns due to a couple of factors. The blue light emitted from phones causes your
body to stop producing melatonin, which is the hormone that regulates your
circadian rhythm and allows you to sleep on a healthy schedule. With 90% of
Americans reporting that they use their phone an hour before they sleep.
Personally, I have really poor sleep hygiene because of my phone. I, for example,
will be scrolling social media and checking the time and will tell myself "10 more
minutes won't hurt", then after that 10 minutes has passed I decide to cram in
maybe 5 more minutes until it's already too late and an hour has passed. It's so
easy to get sucked into this blackhole of procrastination due to our phones and
other devices, and we don't even realise it until after the event.

While technology makes accessing things like banks, friends, memories, and more so
much easier, it also provides access to online gambling sites. Every year about $25
Billion are lost to gambling. Per person that is around $1300. The ease of access
to services such as gambling because of how advanced technology has gotten is a
huge problem as people find it so easy to test their luck and gamble away money.

Scamming is a big problem in modern society. Many misleading emails are sent to
those who aren't familiar with how scammers plague the internet. About $10 Billion
dollars are lost each year to people falling for scam sites, emails, and more. The
sad part is that these scammers primarily target the older generation who aren't as
familiar with technology as the younger generation. When older people see an email
in their inbox claiming that they have won a new car and a fully booked holiday to
a tropical island, they do not know any better than to investigate it in hopes of
claiming their reward.

Privacy is a privilege that many people respect highly. A huge problem with
technology is that a lot of this privacy is voided. 110 Americans alone have been
affected by hackers in the last 12 months. These hackers breach private
information, exploit banks to withdraw large sums of money from people's accounts,
threaten to leak private information and pictures to the public, and much more.
Even our own government has been affected by this, when on May 14th, 2021, all of
the HSE's computers were infected with ransomware and were threatened to pay a
large sum of money in order to unencrypt their information and return to normal.
Even 7 months after this occurred, we are still not fully recovered from it.