Compulsive Computer Use example essay topic

Computers are the future whether we like it or not. Some people dislike computers, because of the complications it takes to understand the basics. Computers are not exactly the easiest tools to work with, but they are the most rewarding, and they are the future. Computer will run all future cars. You will be able to talk to a car and it will take you to your destination. Telephones are technically computerized.

You will soon be able to talk to a person on the telephone as well as look at the person you are talking to on a television set. Also television is computerized. Soon we will have true three-dimensional television. We will be able to watch television like we never have watched it before. We will be able to touch the characters, and feel the characters like they were in the room with you. For people who don't know much about computers, you will be lost in the future.

You should learn what you can while you still have the chance, because things will develop to quickly for you and you will not be able to cope with new technological events. Computers will all into careers and our everyday life more rapidly then you think. Perhaps you would like to be a teacher. You will store all class data, students' work, names, grades, and records all accessible by computer.

Or, how about a doctor? You will use computers to examine and evaluate a patient's problem quicker and more efficiently. These are only a few examples. The bottom line is, computers provide worthwhile careers.

Computers have also reached into other places besides business, schools. Children sit in front of computers and are drilled or taught about certain subjects selected by the teacher. This method of teaching has come under fire. Some people believe the computer should be a tool, not a teacher, while others believe why learn from a normal teacher when a computerized version of the best can teach. The technology of today could allow for a teacher in another country to teach a class through video conferencing. The attempts to spread computer technology into the classroom have produced results and taught lessons as to how computers should be applied.

Dictionaries, encyclopedias and atlases that a student can access from his computer can be a definite advantage. For example, instead of looking for a particular country and simply finding out where it is in a regular atlas, that can type in the name of that country, and not only will they find out where it is faster, but they will obtain more information about that particular country. Instead of having volumes and volumes of heavy encyclopedias, technology has enabled companies to place all of these massive books onto one small CD. This CD is much simpler than the unpleasant job of flipping page by page just to read about an uninteresting topic, such as history. Writing reports on a typewriter was a displeasing method to write term papers; especially if that student runs out of whiteout. Certain programs offer a spell-checker, thesaurus, and other helpful features, which make writing that term paper easier.

These particular programs are only a few of the educational resources available to students. Most educational boards should be open to any new idea that technology has to offer. It would not be fair for a student in a particular city to receive a better education than another student in a different city. Technology is not meant to replace teachers, but is there to serve students to make tedious tasks easier.

Therefore, this technology should be available to every student, wherever they may live. In doing this, it not only needs the support of teachers and educators, but it also requires support from communities. The Internet can be a great socializing venue for children, allowing them to form online relationships with people all across the world. More than 40% of online teenagers use chat rooms, and 45% of 18- to 24-year-olds say they use chat rooms and other online mechanisms for social interaction, as compared to 18% of older users. E-mail and instant message systems also allow children and teenagers to maintain long-distance relationships if they move or when students go away to different schools and colleges. However, recent studies show that the Internet is causing many people to spend less time with friends and family.

Sara Kies ler, a professor of social and decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute, hypothesizes, "Many users may be substituting Web browsing or chat rooms for their stronger, real-life relationships". Researchers also found that teenagers seemed the most vulnerable to the Internet's potentially isolating effects. Many parents are concerned that children are jeopardizing healthy interpersonal relationships offline by spending too much time online. Sixty-two percent of parents worry that the Internet will cause their children to become dangerously isolated, and 39% of parents fear the Internet could lead their children to antisocial behaviors.

Other reason, why children spend so much time by the computer, is computer games. Many of the games played on home computers are more or less identical with those in video arcades. Increasingly, however, computer games are becoming more sophisticated, more difficult, and no longer dependent on elapsed time a few computer games go on for many hours. Graphics have improved to the point where they almost resemble movies rather than rough, jagged video screens of past games.

Some of the newest arcade games generate their graphics through C. D R.O.M. Many include complicated sounds, some even have music and real actors. Given an imaginative programmer, a sophisticated video game has the potential for offering an almost limitless array of exotic worlds and fantastic situations. So many children like playing video games because they have the control and freedom that they don't in their own lives to make their own choices and decisions. They control the action of the character or object in the game environment and make the decisions that influence the outcome in the game; thus they become the center of attention within the game. Evidence suggests that the less the control held within their own lives and the people within them the more likely they are to become compulsive in playing video games. Most children have a limited amount of say or control in what they do.

However, one recent study suggests that any use of the Internet may adversely impact a person's psychological well-being. Kraut et al. monitored Internet usage and several indicators of psychological health among 73 households experiencing their first one to two years online. After statistically controlling for household income, race, age, gender, and social extra version, they found that the number of hours per week spent using Internet was associated with significant decreases in family communication and size of local social circle. Likewise, Internet use was associated with significant increases in loneliness and depression. Such is the paradox, they claim, of a social technology that decreases social involvement and psychological well-being. A person's use of computers is likely to be perceived as abusive only if he or she suffers in the realms of important interpersonal relationships and work activities.

Discussions of the potential interpersonal difficulties from Internet addiction are available, but the potential for Internet abuse in one's work life is perhaps more complex. Online sexual activity and gambling are certainly problematic when conducted using work facilities on company time, but a wide variety of online activities may be judged as inappropriate in the work setting even though they are innocuous in other settings. Writing personal emails, shopping, and "surfing" are just a few examples of the on-the-job behaviors that could lead to warnings, suspensions, and even terminations. Valid data were obtained from 169 employees from various agencies, all of whom completed the survey via the worldwide web.

Approximately 72% of the sample was female, 78% were Caucasian, and 15% were African-American. Participants averaged 36 years of age (ranging from 19 to 64). Compulsive computer use was assessed using ten items based on previous measures of Internet addiction. An additional 41 items asked about the frequency of computer behaviors at work during the previous six months. Other items asked about access to and speed of work computers, employers' policies for computer misuse, employment situations, and demographics Surprisingly, compulsive computer use was not correlated significantly with a factor score representing indecent use of work computers, such as viewing pornography, engaging in sexual chat sessions, or gambling. Rather compulsive computer use was positively correlated with personal task-oriented misuse of work computers, such as playing computer games, browsing the web, building non-job related web sites, downloading files and music, and trading stocks.

In this sample (where 40% work in government or educational institutions), the behaviors most similar to gambling that correlated with compulsive computer use scores were stock trading, stock research, and visiting money-making sites. Chatting while misrepresenting oneself was also significantly correlated with compulsive computer use. Over the last four years, most generic skill requirements of jobs have risen. Nine out of ten of the measures of generic skills show a rise, the exception being the use of physical skills which has not changed. The importance of computer skills rose more rapidly in the last four years than any other job skill. Amongst managers, more than half (53 percent) reported a recent increase in the importance of coaching skills, compared with just 7 percent recording a decrease.

The last four years have also seen a substantial rise in the average qualification level required for jobs. However, the required training time has decreased over this period. There has been a striking and continued increase since 1986 in the number of jobs in which advanced technology is used. There has also been a marked increase over the last four years in the proportion of jobs in which computing is considered to be an essential or very important component of the work. Over 70 percent of people in employment now make use of some type of automated or computerised equipment, and computerised equipment is seen by 40 percent as essential to their work. These changes have affected the work of both men and women.

There has been a sharp reduction of the gender gap in the use of advanced equipment. Women are now as likely to be using advanced equipment as men, and they are just as likely to consider it essential to their work. Nevertheless, men are more likely to be in jobs involving complex and advanced computer applications. There is also a major difference between women in full-time jobs, who have a high use of computerised technologies, and women in part-time jobs, who are much less likely to use it. Computers are one of the most important items society posses today. The computer will be deeply imbedded in people's lives even more when the technology progresses more and more.

Businesses will become heavily dependent as video conferencing and working from home become increasingly more feasible, so businesses will break down from large buildings into teams that communicate electronically. The best teachers possible may teach schools and software may replace teachers, but that is highly unlikely. The Internet will reach into lives, offering an escape from reality and an information source that is extremely vast. Hopefully society will further embrace the computer, as a tool, a tool that must be tended to and assisted, not left to do its work alone. Even so computers will always be present, because the dreams of today are made with computers, planned on computers, and then assembled by computers, the only thing the computer can't do is dream, at least right now.