Paul Roberts's 'Instant Gratification'

American philosopher William James once said, “Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.” In our modern society, we continue to face adversity and hardships due to the forces of technology and multi-billion-dollar social media companies. The development of these major powerhouses has led to the emergence of teen social media addiction, the need for instant gratification and a decrease in our ability to personally communicate. As the next generation, we must strive to conquer the temptations that technology brings to our daily lives by overcoming our own selves.

Over the last decade, technology has been shown to improve productivity in our work processes and is seen as the next step

We tend to value our wants above our needs and desire things that make us happy. Therefore, we always want life to go according to our plan and whatever we want, we need it immediately. Throughout the article “Instant Gratification” by author Paul Roberts, he starts with the experience of a gamer who was addicted to World of Warcraft and then he goes on to talk about how our market is constantly pushing to change our minds into always thinking about our current wants. “Now we’re urged to focus only on the present moment, and on maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain in that moment” (Roberts 7). In my own experience, these feelings are enhanced by waiting for my Instagram feed to update or waiting for someone to reply to a text. I see people who are complaining about how Amazon Prime’s two days take too long and they want overnight shipping. At school, “good” is never good enough, and so we feel like failures when we get an A- which leads to anxiety as written in Benoit Denizet-Lewis’ article “Why Are More American Teenagers Than Ever Suffering From Severe Anxiety?”. In this article, journalist Benoit Denizet-Lewis explains the many anxiety situations that American teens face and how they cope with their severe issues. “He had already spent weeks challenging his own thinking, which often persuaded him that if he failed a single quiz at school, ‘then I’ll get a bad grade in the class, I won’t get into the college I