Advanced technology gives an opportunity to get the information for a short amount of time and without any difficulties. While this development provides numerous benefits, I believe that its drawbacks, particularly the decline in critical thinking and reduced attention span, outweigh its advantages.
There are several advantages of advanced technology. One of them is flexibility. By flexibility I mean that using technologies people get access to the specific and accurate information in a few seconds. In other words, in the past because of lack of advances in technology industry people were spending a lot of time to find out specific information. Now, however, we may find a sufficient amount of information according to their interests and majors. For instance, my grandparents always told me that they had never had such technologies as smartphone with personalized-assistant. They were wondered when they realized that they should not wait for a long time to buy the newspaper with the row of stories occurred previous week. As a consequence, they read news as soon as they appear on the Internet.
Even though flexibility of technology is an advantage, I believe the disadvantage outweighs the advantage for a single reason. Advances in technology made people lose their concentration, which may have detrimental consequences in a future. People consume too much information excessively. That leads to paying less attention to the materials they seek for. If people do not focus on the information, this may lead to superficial thinking rather than deep analysis. As a consequence, technology creates an ideal environment in which superficial thinking can easily flourish. For example, after starting to study again, I found it difficult to concentrate on tasks for more than twenty minutes.Afterwards, I decided to eliminate unnecessary digital distractions during my work. As a result, the constant exposure to short-form content that encouraged inside me shallow cognitive processing faded away.
In conclusion, I admit the advantage like mental and cognitive flexibility. However, I believe disadvantage which is erosion of critical thinking outbalances the advantage