In and out of classrooms, in the halls, even in their own home, there are teenagers on their hand-held devices. We are constantly using them to where our brains have become wired to feel the need to use it.

If technology was sitting on a desk in front of us, we would almost automatically reach for it, as if we could not part with it. We are too dependent on technology to provide entertainment or to use it as a way out of an awkward encounter. Have we forgotten what we did in life before smartphones were invented?

If your phone provider’s software crashed tomorrow, and your phone stopped working, what would you do? You may fall into a stage of panic. Without the use of your cellular device, what would you resolve to?

If Google were to miraculously go away one day, we could not “google” what happened to Google. Twenty years ago, there was no Google, no YouTube, and no wireless Internet. Today, some have yet to realize that there was a time before us, a time without social media and smartphones.

In the past, when someone needed information on a project, they did not whip their phones out of their backpacks. They went to the library and searched for a book on the subject in question.

Since the development of smartphones and WiFi, our generation has not learned how to search through a book for the correct and reliable information we needed on a project. It explains why some see it as hard to find a book for a project that requires a book source.

The way our generation has developed, we have become so accustomed to making ‘memes’ about when we see a 7-year-old with an iPad in a park, then relate to them when we were seven, playing with our friends or siblings in the park.

Technology was created to make life easier, so we would not have to send a letter across the ocean to an associated business in Spain, or so we would not have to wait until the next day to tell our friends about something that happened to oneself.

This is a perfect representation of how our society functions. We could do without technology, but because of our reliance on it, it would be extremely difficult to adjust. With this being said, nothing can stop our society from advancing.

Someone could completely close themselves off from the modern world, but the world around them would keep advancing.

A man named Gary Turk made a five minute YouTube video called ‘Look Up’ two years ago. The video is about how he had began to realize how much time people spend on their devices than with their friends in real life. How people are missing great opportunities and missing out on creating memories because they chose to be “reserved and reclused”.

“So look up from your phone, shut down the display. Take in your surroundings, make the most of today. Just one real connection is all it can take. To show you the difference that being there can make,” said Turk in his video, Look Up.

Being dependent on the use of electronics is growing as more advanced software is being released yearly. We are more interested in what is on social media than learning something that could really help you later in life.

I spoke with Coppell High School teacher Jennifer Martin, who has worked for Coppell ISD for 18 years, on her experience with the development of technology in the classroom and the effect they have on her students.

She started teaching in 1997 as a chemistry teacher in the first trimester, when CHS was on trimesters. Then transitioned to an AP Biology teacher.