Second Place: "Technology is Changing New Generations" by Santiago Castillo Gutierrez

If you are thinking, “brush my teeth,” you are wrong because according to The Social Time, for 80% of the people between 15-44-years-old, the first thing you do after turning down your alarm is check your smartphone!

I know it is hard to admit, but I realized it the hard way. Two months ago my parents grounded me. They called the school and asked them to take away my phone and my computer for 2 weeks. I have to say, in the beginning I was angry. To the majority of us it might have looked like an impossible task. And it was, until the second week.

On a Tuesday, I was there in the common room, on a hard and dirty couch looking like a dinosaur doing my homework with a pencil and a notebook. However, by the middle of study hall I had already finished all my homework! I was astonished. I had the same amount of homework as all my friends and they were worried that study hall was not enough time to finish all of their assessments, and then I start thinking why? How? Then I looked at all the screens in the room. There were at least two screens per person “and I am not saying that we do this at study hall but they were not exactly putting all their attention in their assignments." One of them was looking for inspiration for an essay and at the same time talking with his mom and sending snapchats to his cousin all this while he was shopping online. I'm not joking! That was when a flashback of my mom came to me saying, “It is sad how new generations are letting technology affect their development and the way of living life.” And in that moment, I felt a shiver and I realized that she was right. She was!

I start thinking about the ways we let technology affect us. For example, consider photoshop. It gives you a pursuit of perfection, this idea of modifying yourself in your pictures to meet society's expectation of beauty. After some time, you start thinking that you should really be like that picture - that picture that got hundreds and hundreds of likes. This is one of the many ways technology and social media are working together to depress new generations. Since the day I stopped modifying myself in my pictures, I discovered I still have the same amount of likes. I invite you to try it because we are perfect just the way we are.

Technology gives you the opportunity to say really mean, or disrespectful things that hurt others. Things that you would never say to their face,  but there you are, with a little device tapping away - never thinking about how those words can affect the feelings of another. That's why, since that day, every time that I am writing a message I think, “Would I really say this if I were face to face with this person?"

Another huge problem is that technology really takes up a lot of your time! According to BBC News, humans from 12-28 years-old spend an average of seven hours a day watching a screen. This is why the majority of the new generations read and write less and study less than in the past. Just think about this: Why don't we have a modern Leonardo Da Vinci? He was a professional painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. He did all that around the 1460's. He spend all of his life studying, not on facebook or instagram. And yes my friends, he did all this without Google to answer his questions.

This statement leads me into my next point. We are replacing the knowledge of our elders with Google search and Wikipedia. For example, in the past, everyone would ask their parents and grandparents for a family recipe. Now we just type the name of the recipe in the browser and there you go. You have it in less than 15 seconds and you avoid the 20-minute conversation that you were supposed to have with your grandma about how she is doing and how much she loves to cook that recipe. Now every time that I have a question I ask an adult because wisdom starts with the old.

So today, I am here just to remind you, that we don't need technology. We want technology. That is fine, because it is a great tool that makes our lives easier. But please don't forget that relationships were invented before screens. Thank you.