Last Updated – 22 Jan, 2021
Electronic gadgets have a deep effect on our lives whether it’s communicating with our loved ones, shopping, or learning new skills.
You can keep track of your calories burnt using fitness bands, create delicious food with microwave ovens and enjoy video calls with your loved ones on our smartphone.
However, if you don’t use these gadgets in the right way, you can face some serious negative effects of electronic gadgets like depression, procrastination, and obesity.
Kids are having adverse affects on their eye-sight.
One prime example of gadget’s misuse is, a smartphone is primarily used as kid’s pacifiers, these days. Most of the parents hand over their smartphone to kid if he is cranky or not letting them do their work.
Later on, when kids get used to smartphone, parents mad at them to not indulging in other activities.
There are many more examples that become the disadvantages of these beautiful pieces of technology.
Let’s discuss both the advantages and disadvantages of electronic gadgets in detail.
Advantages of Electronic Gadgets
#1. Increases Productivity
“Time is Money” is a famous saying which fits right in today’s fast life. Your growth depends on how productive you are and you can use electronic gadgets to increase your work speed.
If you are a web designer, a game developer, or a video editor, a big screen monitor can help you work on minute details without wasting time in zooming in or out multiple times as you do a regular laptop screen.
You can also reply to your emails on the go using your smartphone while commuting in the metro that would save your time in the office and you can start your day with something more important like a quick discussion with the team, rather than replying client’s emails.
You can reply messages right from your fitness band or smartwatch without wasting time in unlocking your phone.
If you are a homemaker, an electronic food processor reduces your cutting, chopping, and kneading time as compared to if you do everything manually.
#2. Better Communication
Electronic gadgets have connected the whole world through apps like WhatsApp for easy communication. You can instantly keep in touch with your loved ones through chats or video calls.
Even in the public sector, earlier official letters take 5-7 days to reach the concerned office that delayed the order implementation. Now each government office gets the required order in a couple of minutes through email, after the order is issued.
This has reformed the administrative work with high-speed communication, thanks to gadgets like laptops, WiFi routers, internet modems.
#3. Enhanced Learning
If you are an avid reader, you can easily understand how a small Kindle e-reader can help you preserve hundreds of books inside, saves you from taking care of the physical copies.
There are plenty of advantages of electronic gadgets for students to enhance their learning.
Students can watch online courses on tablets or laptops to learn more about a particular subject like maths or science.
You can easily learn with interactive guidance through recorded videos, presentations or live classes.
They can also learn new skills like painting, programming, web designing, and many more.
Disadvantages of Electronic Gadgets
#1. Addiction
You can easily get addicted to social media and waste your precious time using your laptop or smartphone on checking various posts, reading news, or watching short videos.
Kids get addicted to gaming, texting, or watching kids videos on youtube that result in procrastination from studies and other important activities.
The reason behind this addiction is the chemical reactions happen in our brain. The main culprit is a chemical, Dopamine, which is called pleasure hormone.
When you get some reward for doing an action, a small amount of dopamine releases in your brain that gives you the feeling of contentment and fulfillment.
When you play a game or browse social media apps like Facebook, large quantities of Dopamine releases that keep you involved more in the same.
A similar thing happens when you start watching interesting web-series and you don’t want to miss the next episode before sleeping.
But when you don’t get that amount of Dopamine, you feel sad, bored and dull. So you waste so much of your time to keep on getting that excitement level.
#2. Less Interaction
Students can easily get addicted to gadgets such as PlayStation, Xbox, or smartphone gaming like PUBG.
This addiction leads them to live in their own world and they don’t feel any urge to interact with their family, friends, and other people in real life.
As the brain gets rewired for this high reward stimulus (because of more dopamine release), you don’t get the same excitement when interacting with any family member or a friend that you get while completing a game level, or checking out Fb notification.
What happens then, you easily get bored. These fewer interaction results in a lack of social behavioral skill development.
A study has shown that this gadget addiction leads to serious cognitive-behavioral issues, especially in teenagers.
#3. Health Issues
Since technology has imparted so deep in our life that electronic devices like smartphones have become an integral part of our life and this dependency leads to serious health issues.
According to the National Eye Institute America, around 23% of children use electronic screens more than 3 hours a day that has increased the patients of near-sightedness (myopia) in the last few years.
Other negatives effects of electronic gadgets on health are –
- Lack of sleep due to more exposure to blue light from the screen that blocks the release of melatonin which makes you sleepy.
- Lack of physical activity results in obesity
- You keep on sitting or lying in different postures that put extra pressure on your spine especially on the back of the neck resulting in cervical spondylitis in most people.
Final Verdict
Self-awareness is the only way to enjoy the advantages of electronic gadgets and keep a distance from the disadvantages.
You have to follow a balanced approach to use gadgets for your productivity and entertainment (but for a limited time), only then you can grow yourself to achieve your goals in life.
Because otherwise, you would be killing your time in checking out the notifications of how many likes you have got on your latest Facebook post or wasting time in a useless group discussion on WhatsApp.
Always keep in mind –
Excess of Everything is Bad
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