Ray Bradbury's The Veldt: The Dangers Of Technology

Technology has always been the fastest highway to the destruction of people’s lives. There are many elements that can disrupt their lives. Some would think that accidents could ruin people’s lives, while others might say that drugs can ruin people’s lives. There is one problem which arose uncontrollably as the 21st century began: technology. Three dangers of technology are addiction, violence, and an erosion of social skills.

Initially, people can become addicted to technology. People can’t live a day without technology. For example, in Ray Bradbury’s short story The Veldt, David McClean shows that he can’t perform basic living skills without technology by saying, “[w]hy you’d starve tomorrow if something went wrong in your kitchen. You wouldn’t

know how to tap an egg” (Bradbury 7). To put it simply, George overly relied on technology, so he didn’t know how to survive if the technology breaks down in his house and it would be challenging for him. This relates to addiction, because technology is taking up enormous space in his life which made him impossible to stop. Furthermore, people play games even after they reach their limit. For example, in China’s Web Junkies, the teenagers wore diapers and didn’t come out of their room for two months just to play games (Shlam and Medalia). To put it another way, children who are addicted to technology do anything to be connected to the Internet. Blocking the outside world, they stay in the rooms. Moreover, they think that going out of their room to finish their basic necessities are wasting time. Briefly, technology can turn people into maniac.

Next, people are affected by the violence of technology. People change their personalities by using technology. For example, in Susan Greenfield’s article Modern Technology, Susan Greenfield gives the causes of changing their personalities in this way: “[s]urrounding environment has a huge impact both on the way our brains develop and how that brain is transformed into a unique human mind” (Greenfield 1). That is to say that people's personalities are malleable and impressionable. Since people are overly obsessed with brutality of technology, they can think that violent materials, which they are exposed in regular lives, are normal thinking for everyone. Affected by the negative forces of technology could have an impact on their surroundings and lives. Especially for children, brutality and savagery are usually banned from their lives. Nevertheless, technology is changing their method of thinking from naive to brutal thinking. Additionally, people want more violence as they’re exposed. For example, in Ray Bradbury’s short story The Veldt, Lydia expresses her worried thoughts of her children, Peter and Wendy by saying, “‘because the children have thought about Africa and lions and killing so many days that the room’s in a rut’” (Bradbury 4). To rephrase it, people kept thinking about the violence, which they learned from the technology is similar to addiction of violent materials. As they are exposed to cruel materials, people get feelings of thrill and provoke their hidden mind of violence. They want more and more like drugs since the technology is like an emergency exit of their lives. All in all, peoples’ thoughts are affected by the technology in negative ways.

Finally, people can erode social skills by overly using technology.

People’s lives are influenced by the lack of communicating. For example, in Hamilton Spectator’s article Wired For the Future, the writer explains the negative effects caused by the lack of communicating by saying, “[i]f teens stop communicating with their friends and others face to face, they will lose the ability to navigate complex social situations and that could be devastating for them when they are faced with college and job interviews....” (Hamilton Spectator 2). In other words, that when people keep forgetting how to communicate by overly using messaging systems, it could lead to negative problems in their lives: interviews or meeting with delegates. Those are important to people’s lives, because when children are independent and working in their jobs, they have to socialize with others. Communicating is unavoidable in social life, because people still communicate even though texting and messaging are taking enormous space in our world. In addition, People text too much without talking and communicating face to face. For instance, in Jessica Mazzola’s article Nighttime Texting, she showed the surveyed data of texting by saying, “...American teens send and receive an average of 1,500 texts per month” (Mazzola 1). By all means, texting is rooted deeply in people’s lives and replaced where real conversations should be. As the article mentioned, 1,500 texts per month should be affecting people’s lives directly. Communicating face-to-face and real conversations are certainly reduced dramatically as the texting increases. Therefore, people get influenced by the erosion of

technology.

Despite the fact that technology is threatening, it can also be favorable. First, people can get valuable information by using technology. For example, Internet provides highly specialized

websites. Compellingly, the government authorized websites and universities’ websites are unrestrictedly open for public access for myriad resources. Accordingly, high qualities of works will be resulted by students. Also, people can access to information readily. For example, access of the internet is evidently simple. In this case, people can access to information whenever they want. As smartphones developed, people don’t need to search up books to find information. They can approach to information by turning on the Internet and type in several words. Consequently, the Internet provides fast and easy way for people to access. To sum up, even though there are more negative ways, there are still positive ways, which affects people.

To conclude, since technology is obsessive, aggressive, and corrosive, people can be influenced in negative ways. Technology makes people obsessed and overly relying. It also influences people in aggressive ways: personalities and method of thinking. Finally, it impacts people by corroding social skills. On the other hand, technology can be favorable such as easy access to valuable information. Using technology can be convenient; however, people have to realize the boundary line.