Maryn told me to post writing. So I post writing.

Followers- here is a recent essay I wrote for Honors English. Sorry there are no indentations, but well, you can't indent on here.

The Inconvenient Truth (About Modern Technology)

　 I discovered something extraordinary about modern technology. Not only do I believe it correlates with recent spikes in obesity in the United States, but it also helps corrupt minds and impair our communication skills. Why, you may ask, did I have a sudden change of heart towards these villainous energy guzzlers and time wasters? It all started with a conversation between a dear friend and confidante of mine.This friend is one who enjoys writing and reading. Not only that but she also enjoys watching television, giving advice to people via text message, listening to her iPod, and perhaps writing a similar honors English summer essay..... all while updating her facebook profile. She is very fun and extremely gifted in the field of literary arts. She is a great listener, but when she gets a text message, she turns into a sponge, absorbing not her surroundings but that of a 2-inch by 1.5 inch screen. It’s almost like she has been teleported to a different dimension, one not fueled by the lively laughter of her friends or the swaying of a tree in the wind, but rather a tech-savvy world filled with "lol’s" and "brb’s" and "g2g’s". She has entered the Twilight Zone.

Every day more and more people are being ensnared by the ‘Twilight Zone’ of technology, and it doesn’t help that every time you turn on the television, the media tries to entice you with some new-fangled search engine or a new website to watch videos. But little do we know that with every ‘tweet’ and every post, we are ever so slowly becoming more and more addicted and more and more dependant on our technological devices. And then we do what every addict does, we crave it. We have technological withdrawals. And we find more ways to access it, so we can be signed in, tuned in, and plugged in as often as we can, because (being humans) we are so curious that we have to know what is going on with everyone around us at all times to feed our addiction and consume our lives entirely.

The output of such a system overload has caused our brains to have too much tedious and unnecessary information in replacement of logical and expedient information that could save our communication skills and sometimes even our lives. For example, instead of reading about an incoming earthquake to the Bountiful area, we are bombarded by redundant forwarded messages of "if you don’t send this to twelve people, you will die at midnight!" and surrounded by video messages of a dancing and singing President Obama.

I recently saw the truth of what was happening to out generation while watching television. A sophisticated looking Alec Baldwin walked across the screen wearing a business suit and sporting a suave smile. The commercial was advertising for Hulu, a knock-off version of Youtube. It proceeded with Alec Baldwin stating that people needed to watch Hulu in order for our brains to turn into mush. After that, the "aliens" (Baldwin) would eat our brains. I will admit that the commercial was humorous, but while sitting on my couch amidst chuckling to myself, I realized that that was exactly what was happening to our society. (Well, minus the aliens of course) And this company actually admitted that they were out to get our money and technological attention, causing another distraction to our world, causing more unnecessary information which causes less work and more laziness resulting in obesity. All it is is just one giant distraction that reels us in like fish and hooks us before we have the chance to swim away.

But if you are looking for a way to get un-hooked there is a solution, and you aren’t alone. There is a technological Nikorette, and it is there, just look outside the nearest window, and you’ll find yourself there. You have the power to break free from the addiction and find something better to do with your life, because help is not always just a click away.