Is smart technology making us dumb? 

      People fear that smart technology is damaging our cognitive abilities and making us dumb. However, people really do not have to worry about that. In fact, smart technology is actually making us smarter.

      To start with, smart technology helps us become more knowledgeable. Thanks to the advancement of smart technology, the amount of knowledge we have access to today is unprecedentedly vast. Smart technology, to some extent, helps build a massive, freely accessible knowledge base, from which we can retrieve our collective intellectual output. Whenever we need to know something, we search the Internet for information. We become more knowledgeable when we immerse ourselves in the world of smart technology.

       In addition, smart technology helps us learn better. It helps provide diverse ways of learning and creates better learning experiences for different levels of education. For example, according to some studies, children using the Internet are more confident in learning and perform better with the help of images, videos, and animations. College students take advantage of smart devices to share and transfer study materials, which saves their time and efforts. Also, smart technology benefits self-learning by providing numerous online tutorials and instructions. So smart technology helps us learn more effectively, efficiently, and flexibly.

       What’s more, smart technology helps us be more innovative. With smart devices serving as tools to handle tasks such as memorization, calculation, and storing information, smart technology frees our mind from all trivial things in life and leaves us more time to think about more complicated and challenging things. Our mental resources can be allocated to tasks that require more creativity and innovation.

       Some people worry that smart technology is making us dumb because it has taken over most of our routine tasks. They say that this may affect our intelligence, as with our brain we either “use it or lose it”. But actually, we still have to make decisions based on the information provided by smart technology. We still have to think about how to improve smart technology to make better use of it. There is no scientific evidence showing that smart technology is harming our cognitive abilities.

     To sum up, smart technology is changing our lives and benefiting us in positive ways. Though there may be some negative impacts of using and developing smart technology, making us dumb is not one of them.