People today are capable of accessing the Internet through their mobile smart devices. This puts them in touch with an infinite amount of information. Although this trend has many positive ramifications, it is not without drawbacks. To illustrate this, the effect smart devices have on memory and privacy will be analyzed.
For one, smart devices have caused people to rely less on their memories. For example, sites like Wikipedia make it easy for smartphone users to quickly access information related to history and geography. The problem with this convenience is that these same people are committing fewer and fewer things to memory, and this makes them slaves to their devices. Thus, this is one of the main drawbacks to having a wide availability of information through smart devices.
In addition to this, smart devices have encroached upon people’s privacy. For instance, last year a child in America was unknowingly filmed by his classmate while performing an embarrassing dance routine. After the video was uploaded, this child suffered extreme teasing, which ultimately led him to develop a mental disorder. As this shows, the exchanging of information through smart devices is not always a positive thing.
As the above makes clear, the access smartphones have to vast amounts of information poses some drawbacks. It is predicted that these weaknesses will continue to grow in size and scale into the foreseeable future.