How many times have you heard a parent or older sibling tell you something like, "You're so lucky, in my day we used to have to go to the library and read books to research"? Or maybe you've heard about when encyclopedias used to be printed on paper.
It's true, technology has radically shifted the landscape in which a student learns, studies and conducts research. Most of us carry the culmination of human knowledge in our pockets, accessed in a .45 second Google search on our smart phones. There's no excuse to not know anymore.
It's certainly made my life easier; research that would have taken a day trip to the library just 20 years ago can now be done in my underwear on my couch at home. No more heavy books, no more Dewey Decimal System, no more endless stacks of notecards.
However, with the great power of the Internet and technology comes a great responsibility to exercise self-discipline. While the Internet has a near limitless amount of resources at your disposal to aid your learning, it also has a near limitless amount of distractions.
In some ways, I believe technology is just as likely to hinder a modern student's school successes as it is to aid them in their educational endeavors. Even now, when I'm supposed to be working on this column, I'm glancing at the Diamondbacks' Spring Training schedule and browsing Reddit on my phone.
Technology is ubiquitous in today's society — over 90 percent of Americans own a smartphone, and I'm sure almost all of your friends do as well. How many times in class do you check a text or send an email? That's not even to say you're goofing off; in today's world of instantaneous communication, it's not unheard of for a student to be in class and sending an important email for a different class. Everything needs to happen instantly, or it's too slow. This is something your parents or other students of yesteryear didn't have to deal with.
Even the technology in our homes puts what our parents had to shame. Should you study a bit, or should you binge watch this new season of Daredevil on Netflix first? Maybe you're like me and choose to lackadaisically look over notes with a movie playing on your Xbox One. I know I don't get the full benefit of the study session, but I do it anyway. Part of me can't help it.
Technology has done amazing things and is an indispensable asset, but like alcohol, cake or Chipotle burritos, too much of a good thing can be a very, very bad thing.
Sure, typewriters can't Copy+Paste or Delete, but they also can't show you today's top ten fail videos on YouTube or look up the latest highlights on ESPN. While it may take longer to write things out on pen and paper, a pen never suffers a massive hardware failure midway through a term paper.
So, next time you hear someone tell you that students have it easy these days because of what technology can do, remember that while that's definitely true, you also need a stronger sense of discipline than students of decades past.
Related links:
Technology: The Millennial's cross to bear
Future Tense 'leaps gap' between technology, society
Reach the columnist at cjwood3@asu.edu or follow @chriswood_311 on Twitter.
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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