Technology

Teenagers are often faced with tough decisions regarding college choice, major and what activities to pursue, but parents have other concerns once these decisions have been made. Modern technology can be both beneficial and detrimental to teens and the college experience. Parents can spend four years worrying about their teen and what she is doing or trust that she will make all the correct decisions and shy away from anything that could hurt her or her family. Although technology has revolutionized learning abilities in classrooms, the speed that teenagers communicate, the methods that teachers present material and the future benefits in choosing a career in technology, it also has damaging and sometimes permanent effects. A removal from society, both physically and mentally, can transpire, as well as the development of serious disorders that strain teenagers in key years of life.
Parents often worry about the safety of the internet and the effects modern technology will have on their child. Because new equipment is constantly updated, teens want to have the latest: phones, computers and MP3 players, to satisfy their communication needs. Parents may worry that new applications like text messaging and mobile internet will cause problems in school with sentence structure in writing and in social settings because of the loss of face to face communication, a loss that comes with an e-mail or text message. It has been proven that “teens now do more texting on their cell phones than calling” as Donna St. George of The Washington Post discovered while writing her article “6,473 Texts a Month, But At What Cost?”. David E. Meyer, a professor at the University of Michigan confirms “it’s a huge cultural phenomenon with huge down-the-road consequences”(St. George). But do parents have the responsibility to limit their college bound teenager in any way from using a form of communication or technology? Technology is not harmful as long as it does not engulf a person’s life;...