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The Impact of Technology on the Cognitive Ability of College Students

Technology is a body of knowledge which is devoted to creating tools, processing activities as well as extraction of materials. In most cases, we usually use technology in accomplishing different tasks in our lives and thus technology can be described to be a product or even a process. Use of technology extends our abilities and makes people be a very important part of the technological system (Januszewski and Michael). In addition, technology can be explained to be an application of science used in solving problems. There is no doubt that the technology has brought about considerable benefits to the society at large as its use and popularity is increasing day in day out. On the other hand, it has the not-so-considerable effects over time. As the role of technology in our lives has increased drastically over time, our cognitive ability and the analysis skills have meaningfully declined during this period. This means that technology and cognitive ability appear to have a neutralizing influence on many people. Unfortunately, this is true for the young people like the teens.

As technology has proved to have many positive effects over the past years, it is evident that as it advances, it may hinder the development of the human brains more particularly in terms of cognitive ability and solving problems within the young adults and more so who are in colleges. Technology has greatly led to decrease in attention among the college students. It has affected the cognitive and problem-solving abilities by decreasing the attention among many college students. For one to think well, attention is an essential gateway. If one has no attention span, it is very hard for him/her to think about something successfully. Without attention, other features of thinking like memory, creativity, learning, perception, problem-solving, reasoning as well as decision making are greatly affected. Generally, the ability to pay attention and focus plays a vital role in the developmental and growing success of the college students (Rosen et al 55).

Many researchers have found that the ability to pay attention is greatly influenced by and greatly shaped by the surrounding where it is used. For instance, in the past, many children spent most of their free time going through their books and this had no to little distractions, but required great attention and also allowed one imagine creatively. Currently, many of the teens and children spend most of their time playing using their tablets, watching the television or socializing on their computers or mobile phones. These activities, when compared to reading, have very different impact on attention. They usually provide visual stimuli as well as distractions thus allowing for the fragmented attention and little need for memory or imagination.

Technology is viewed to be different from reading on the basis of the effects each has on the brain. For instance, reading a book in a cool, quiet and slow-paced environment which has few distractions permits the brain to focus mainly on reading and thinking deeply about information which is being offered for the book. Equally, using the internet often is surrounded by many distractions which cause the focus to be particularly fleeting. It is worth to note that reading for pleasure establishes reflection, creativity, imagination, critical thinking and attention in a method which technology could.

It is a fact that many of the college students search to the internet for assistance with information, answers, facts and also knowledge. Although the internet permits the society to add knowledge as well as to increase the productivity, it also hinders our capability of analyzing different topics and also thinking critically. As the use of the internet becomes a big part of the daily lives, it decreases the desire and ability to be inquisitive, thinks critically and to retain information for long period among the college students.

The college studies are examples of how the internet is hindering the important features of student’s growth and development including the cognitive ability among the college students. Students who access the internet during the class sessions and use it during the lecture period are usually unable to remember class information compared to those who were not using the internet. This is usually shown through their results after some period of the lectures. This shows that the students cannot process and recall what they are taught during the class session hence they score poorly.

Unfortunately, the cognitive ability among the college students of this generation is declining at a high rate compared to the previous generations. The internet is readily available to most of the students and thus they can access the required information, answers and solutions rather than studying topics and thinking critically and creatively on their own. This leads to decrease in the cognitive ability among the students since many of them end up copying and pasting the answers or solutions directly from the internet (Sternberg 40).

As technology has played a major role in the lives of students, the critical thinking, analyzing and problem-solving skills have great decreased while the visual skills have improved. It is clear that many students have changed a lot due to the exposure to the technology. Reading for pleasure has greatly declined among the college students in the recent decades hence enhancing as well as engage the imagination in a method that the visual media like video games do not. Due to this fact, it is clear that the advancement of technology has led to decrease in reading for pleasure hence many of the college students do not experience the positive image and engagement experienced from intense reading.

On the other hand, technology can be viewed to be of great importance to the cognitive ability and reading of the college students. For instance, the use of computers in doing homework enables students to multi-task hence making the session enjoyable since when one is bored can jump to the Facebook for some minutes and back to the assignment. In addition, the use of technologies like the PowerPoint presentation, web page creativity, and Microsoft Word assists in improving the reading as well as writing habits of the students (Sternberg 42).

Technology has reduced the number of innovators and critical thinkers among the students. This is because if the use of multiple choices in standardizing testing. Many of the educators concentrate on teaching to test policy which has a great limitation to the opinions of the students. This usually makes the teachers and students think that the multiple choice exams reduce biases and make work easier because of the use of automated machines which are used for the grading purpose. The use of technology has a positive effect in that it assists the students to take short notes which they prefer since the long materials usually draw away the attention of the students. The online learning has resulted in rising of teaching to test method which is essential to the students who take the licensed exams. This exam has led to the enrollment of the students in the traditional academic fields. It is also evident that the computer technologies have a positive impact on the writing skills among the college students. Generally, the students who use computers often show great improvement in their writing compared to the students who don’t use the computers hence increase the cognitive ability of most of the college students.

Technology has made the learning process to be easier among the college students. In the case of the complex calculations, it assists in reducing the stress related to the complex problems. The introduction of the use of calculators enables the calculations of complicated mathematical problems to be easy. Though the introduction of technology in schools appear to be destructing the lives of the college students, it is of great help. The use of computers in schools has widened the global economy at large. It has extended past the classroom hence serve the needs of the disabled, those in rural areas as well as those who prefer learning from their home. This facilitates the increase of the cognitive ability among a wide range of students without necessarily getting into classrooms. This is done through online classes and license exams. Through the use of the modern technology, college students have a wide connection to one another and to the entire world at large hence increasing the knowledge content among the college students. The use of internet enables students to access information any time they want irrespective of where they are. For colleges to be successful, they must incorporate technology within their system.

In conclusion, technology is advancing at a high rate and it has to be embraced. Currently, less can be done to prevent the advancement of technology since it is viewed as a catalyst for the change in the learning process. What should be done is to identify the primary role of technology in the learning process. This will greatly assist the students in getting the learning materials in an easier way hence increasing their cognitive ability as well as problem-solving skills.

The use of technology effect has to be clear so as to facilitate efficiency and effectiveness in the work of the students. To make better use of the technology, the teachers have to plan for when to use the technology and when not to use and this will reduce the problem of multitasking by visiting Facebook while learning. Since people are currently leaving in the technology world, it may be very hard to shift back to the old ways of learning and thus the positive impacts of technology should be supported so as to enable further advancement in the technology.

Work cited

Januszewski, Al, and Michael Molenda, eds. Educational technology: A definition with commentary. Routledge, 2013.

Rosen, Larry, et al. "Sleeping with technology: cognitive, affective, and technology usage predictors of sleep problems among college students." Sleep Health: Journal of the National Sleep Foundation 2.1 (2016): 49-56.

Sternberg, Robert J., and David D. Preiss, eds. Intelligence and technology: The impact of tools on the nature and development of human abilities. Routledge, 2013.