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Believe it or not, there was once a time when we weren’t so reliant on computers, smartphones and other such things. We don’t have to be.

You may have heard some of the numerous complaints and studies about how people are becoming addicted to their portable devices (smartphones, tablets, ipads, etc). Critics say that people don’t know how to break away from their devices (even when in bed or in the bathroom), spend excessive amounts of time surfing the web and updating their social media accounts. Some might dismiss this as ranting from old-schoolers who aren’t used to this kind of technology, but it’s a fairly valid point; too much of anything is bad for you. How does one justify wasting half the day texting, tweeting and websurfing when they could be doing something more productive with their time?

There’s also the argument that we rely too much on computers to think for us. For example, cars with automatic braking functions and phones that give automatic, custom reminders (as seen in the video above). This is also a problem; any time we let someone (or something) else do our thinking for us, we leave ourselves vulnerable to them. What happens when your phone glitches and doesn’t give those automated reminders? What happens if you’re not watching the road and your car doesn’t automatically hit the brakes before it crashes into something?

You might have seen commercials for smartphones, tablets and other electronic devices advertising how fast they are; how they can respond to your commands INSTANTLY. This probably contributes to the fact that we, in general, have a shrinking attention span. It shouldn’t be a big deal to have to wait a few seconds for something to happen; the world doesn’t always operate on our time, and we don’t need technology reinforcing the idea that it should.

Technology is meant to aid us and make our lives a little bit easier, but it becomes problematic when we start to lean on it to the point that we can’t survive without it.