Topic: "Addicted to screens".

 Addicted to screens

How long do you spend online every day?  And when we’re online, we chat with friends, listen to music, watch videos, play games, share photos and send instant messages. The internet is transforming our society, too. It has a huge impact on culture, politics and business.

Now there are ‘screenagers’ who live most of their lives in the virtual world. Some people spend more time online than with their families!

More than ninety percent of British teenagers own a mobile phone. These screenagers spend more than twenty-seven hours a week online. They can now connect when and where they like with smartphones and tablets. As for social media, teens like keeping in touch via Twitter, Snapchat or Instagram. They leave Facebook to their mums and dads! Teenagers may be connected all the time.

But is internet addiction a bad thing? Think for a moment about the information that you receive on screens. It’s certainly not like reading a book. Now we receive information via connections or hyperlinks. We just click on the link or touch the screen and something new appears.

And what about the videos of pets you watch on YouTube? You think it’s funny or superficial, but this is part of a big online conversation. It allows us to communicate with people in a more creative way. 

So, do smartphones make us smarter or less smart?

A recent British report said that removing smartphones from schools will give students more time for their education. It said that smartphones are a big distraction, make students less productive and are bad for learning. However, in the USA some people do not agree. Recently one school in New York decided to allow students to use smartphones at school. They said that smartphones can be an excellent resource for the classroom. In this New York school, smartphones can definitely make you smarter!

Let’s turn to Korea for one more  answer. There’s good news! Korea is the most connected country in the world, even young children of three to five years old use the internet and spend eight hours a week online.Then there are teenagers using the internet for eighteen hours a day, but this country is also number one for education. It is regularly top of the world’s education league tables. The reason may be that from an early age, Korean children are proficient at working together on the internet to solve problems!

So in the conclusion, I can say that it is only our choice how to use the internet! We carry a lot of information in our pockets and this information can be really useful.