Author: Mohammad

FINAL PAPER DRAFT 1

Mohammad Bazal

Research Paper

Professor Olivia Wood

Nov 15, 2022 

  With about five billion people on the internet around the world it is apparent that technology is a huge part of society. What people don’t know is that there is a huge toll that comes with the accessibility of the internet. This huge toll that comes with technology is your mental health. The endless scrolling and staying up at night waiting for that one text that you have been anticipating either from a loved one or just another person in your messages results in one of the harmful effects of technology: the lack of sleep. The lack of sleep can mess up someone’s sleep cycle leading to headaches and some addictions that are apparent in adolescents, the addiction of coffee and energy drinks to help them get through the day. Another harmful effect on mental health that is led by technology is the addiction to entertainment, as gaming and phone usage at this age as reported by ABC news teens spend more than seven hours on screen per day (Jacobo 2). An addiction to entertainment can be justified by parents for their teens as it helps them cope with all their problems in the real world but an average of seven hours is unhealthy and leads to low attention span because of the concentration  used when watching one screen for multiple hours.

The dark side of technology has a lot to do with addictions including social media. The control they have in freighting, with all this tracking activity they have for their algorithms can predict your actions before you think about it. Mental health declines in the new generation is an ongoing growing problem.The endless scroll makes your brain go to autopilot hoping for a post to give you dopamine. You notice that you scroll to the bottom and each post takes up your whole screen on purpose as they want you to keep scrolling while in your brain unconsciously you see yourself scrolling for hours as you are trying to find something funny or for the post to appeal to you.  The refresh button has the same concept of the endless scroll as you can refresh your explore page as much as you want until you find what you want to see and after you see that post you do the same refresh creating an endless cycle.  If you use instagram you notice that when you post you get likes in chunks this is on purpose as they want you keep refreshing and when that patch of likes comes on your feed that activates the dopamine in your brain and you get happy at this little thing and keep refreshing spending more time on that. All in all if you have so much dopamine from social media and the little things in person won’t make you happy anymore. 

Other than social media and its ways to manipulate dopamine, with a lack of sleep you would also have a rather unhappy day. In an article by BMC Psychiatry they state “Time spent on general computer use was prospectively associated with sleep disturbances and reduced performance for the men. For the women, using the computer without breaks was a risk factor for several mental health outcomes. Some associations were enhanced in interaction with mobile phone use. Using the computer at night and consequently losing sleep was associated with most mental health outcomes for both men and women” (Härenstam 4).  This notes that there is a direct relationship in the usage of technology and the lack of sleep, this discovery explains why the development of an adolescent is hindered as they spend most of their day on technology then lack sleep to be productive throughout the day leading them to cling to technology for dopamine creating an everyday cycle that many are in and don’t even know they are in a loop of unproductivity. The article also writes, “ In a longitudinal study among youths, pathological gaming predicted higher levels of depression, anxiety, social phobia, and poor school performance [22]. It seemed to be a long-term exposure, as most (84%) of the youths who were pathological gamers at baseline were still pathological gamers after 2 years. (Härenstam 7). This supports my claims as this cycle of dopamine found by technology is leading to higher levels of depression, anxiety, social phobia, and poor school performance. When all of a person’s time is spent on the screen then they lose touch with reality. As the article explains it,  “A negative loop was suggested, where people who are already lonely may have a preference for using computers, which in turn could increase their tendency to lack real-life contacts, and lead to an even higher use.  (Härenstam 8).  When all your time is spent on the screen and you lose touch with reality which starts to destroy the relationships that you had because you tend to be socially inactive when spending all your time on screen. 

On the contrary, a healthy amount of screen time can lead to many positives including mental health as it can be a good break to have when dealing with hardships. A journal notes that,  “Cell phones and computers allowed greater linkage with social, medical, mental health, and employment resources”(Townsend 3).  As technology advances the opportunities also come about such as e-commerce and games that are realistic. Some teens are playing a healthy amount and developing to have good time management and being responsible as they are also doing well in school and some financially. In a journal written by Frier, he writes “Partial correlation analyses show that media multitasking specifically was mostly correlated with negative mental health, while playing video games was associated with faster responding and better mental health (4). This notes that social media addiction is leading to a negative correlation with mental health but video games are promoting better mental health and a faster reaction time. With a healthy amount of technology usage research shows a positive relationship with academics, reaction speed, and mental health. It is always necessary to take a break from your daily schedule and some do it with technology and others with things that don’t involve technology but make them happy. 

This pandemic of addiction from social media is arising in the new generation as “The report also found that online video viewing is “through the roof,” as more than twice as many young people are watching videos every day than in 2015. The percentage of teens who said they spend time watching online videos jumped from 34% to 69%, and the number of tweens who reported watching online videos rose from 24% to 56% in that same time frame” (Jacobo 5). Now from 2015 to 2022 that number has probably increased as technology has been more acces sible around the world. Many teens blame this new addiction to being “ iPad kids” as a child. Parents are being lazy in the new generation and leaving their kids with technology in which they are growing up with an attachment with a device rather than an attachment with people or even their family. When kids are brung up with technology, they start crying when it is not accessible to them, leading the device to seem like a need rather than a want. These kids becoming adolescents have the need to prove to people their social status and that is why new apps like BeReal have become famous. People want to prove that their life is good all times of the day and live a fake life rather than opening up and acknowledging they have an addiction with their device. 

If you have so much dopamine from social media and the little things in person won’t make you happy anymore. This is one of the causes of the vape addiction in younger teens as people consistently seek dopamine for reinforcement because of their phone. The addiction of social media can lead to other addictions such as nicotine. At one point the endless scroll and other things on social media become a habit rather than a source of happiness. When you are accustomed to so much dopamine that is raised by social media and suddenly as time goes on you don’t feel that same happiness, many people go to nicotine to get that dopamine. Technology can develop adolescence to nicotine and tobacco addicts. 

What people don’t know is that there is a huge toll that comes with the accessibility of the internet. Your mental health is the major victim of technology. One of the negative impacts of technology is loss of sleep, which is brought on by nightly scanning and waiting for that one text you have been looking forward to from a loved one or just another person in your messages. Lack of sleep can disrupt a person’s sleep cycle, which can result in headaches and some addictions, such as the dependence on coffee and energy drinks among teens to get through the day. The addiction to entertainment, which includes gaming and phone use at this age as kids spend more than seven hours on screens each day, is another detrimental consequence of technology on mental health. An addiction to entertainment can be justified by parents for their teens as it helps them cope with all their problems in the real world but an average of seven hours is unhealthy and leads to low attention span because of the concentration  used when watching one screen for multiple hours. You have to remember that you are controlling your technology rather than letting the technology control you, your time, and your happiness.

FINAL DRAFT PAPER 1 UNIT 1

Mohammad Bazal

9/13/2022

Professor Oliva Wood 

Unit 1: This I No Longer Believe

Illusions 

Growing up in a Pakistani family meant having parents with great expectations academically. The norm that my parents are accustomed to is that their child having good grades in school will lead them to becoming an engineer, a doctor or a lawyer because those are the professions that make a healthy living. These ideas instilled to my siblings and I created a standard that others would see as a reach-  having perfect scores going to any ivy league and ultimately going to law and med school. As the youngest in the family I couldn’t believe my brother’s journey from a public school to an ivy school while he still went out, played sports with his friends, and had time to play video games too. These observations lead me to believe that the society’s norms are just illusions.

My parents themselves had no higher education than a middle school graduate but still made their life in a foreign country at such a young age. My father didn’t know anything, not even the language but learned through experience and this is why a person’s knowledge can differ from what they have gone through. For me that is truly inspirational as not being afraid to be in the unknown and through observation and the teaching of others by their experience or what they have said to you is being a student. A student in society is labeled on the criteria of going to school and back but personally I believe that a student is the one who shows initiative and has an open mindset. As I started elementary school it wasn’t about learning hard concepts rather it was learning social skills and being obedient. Looking back, elementary school built my core principles on how to talk and function in society. When you start having the mindset that school wasn’t a routine rather than a place to make yourself better every time you went then you would truly be a student by my definition. 

Going into middle school there was a sense of responsibility of doing all the homework and getting all the work in because if you didn’t you would fall back, the idea of school has always been trying to get the best grade or even getting a passing grade to move forward. Chasing these high grades has always been the priority, which influenced cheating. You would always look around the room during the test and people would either be cheating with other people or even online. It wasn’t that these people didn’t know the material, it was the pressure of getting a 100 and being the best so you can go to a specialized high school that led them to cheat no matter what to guarantee success. When going into these high schools cheating was even more prevalent, everyone wanted to go into good colleges and associated college with their wage. 

  I too always cared about grades and made it my personality. I used to study for every test and right after I received a high grade I would start studying for the next test and forget about the last. I used to come home and show my report card to my parents and them praising me would be my dopamine. Something to prove was always my motive whether it was my siblings, parents or even my classmates. Showing society that I was successful just because I was doing good in school and that would keep translating as I progressed through the years. 

Now that I am in college, I finally understand that knowledge is what makes a person successful, it doesn’t matter how much you study just for a test and forget it after a year. It’s about gaining and building knowledge, if you cheated you cheated yourself in the future. Someone who cheated in a math beginning course could never keep going without cheating because without the basics you would be lost. This applies to working as well. You go into a job with an entry level and the return offer is off the work you do rather than some tests. Tests should be considered practice if you have the knowledge in the field. In college it is considered to be a norm to talk to your professor and gain more knowledge than the rest of the class as if you are more innovative than the result would be before you. Going back to my parents’ education who had never seen high school or college they would be ecstatic if someone has helped them when they came to a foreign country, some people don’t truly find the importance of their resources until they are not accessible anymore. 

Everyone wants you to believe that doing good in school has a direct relationship with success but as you can see with the top 1 percent build their own wealth with things that weren’t taught in school such as how to create your business or even having an online presence to build your brand. Examples of this is that all of the top 10 richest people in the world own business and made their name and brand out of nothing. The time you spend worrying about others can be used to create something unique and become the person you always dreamt of. It is ok though, the majority have these misconceptions, a piece of paper shouldn’t be your degree or validation as personal skills get you places in life. Personally as a computer science major I know that these A+ in classes that aren’t related to computer science won’t help me in the real setting and I should have realized this before in high school and in my free time would have started coding to learn and expand my knowledge. The illusion of school is really dangerous. It puts your mind in a cycle that you wake up at the same time everyday, go to the same classes five days a week, do homework when you come home and the free time before sleep is for your free time. The weekend is for the family as your parents and you are off work so you can hangout for two days. That 7 day schedule is your life from the ages of 4-18 you learned how to follow rules and believed that you were ahead in life by doing these things. Nowhere in that schedule did you gain any skills and knowledge to use in the real world. You are always considered a child and suddenly you are labeled an adult at a random age in the 20s depending on your circumstances and the society around you. 

Breaking out this cycle of illusions thrown by the world is what helps you self evaluate and you decide how you want to spend your time and efforts to change the world or even have self goals is the key for self discovery. Everyone will tell you what to do because they have been told what to do in which you will break this cycle. As a freshman in college this cycle was ultimately broken as I got to choose my classes and when my free time is to go to the gym, study while having free time for entertainment and most importantly time to hone my skills and knowledge in the computer science field. Working as your own boss makes you think out of the norm and at the end of the day you realize that the future is near and without planning you will fall into the cycle of a 9-5 that doesn’t pay enough for all your desires because you never put the work in.

It doesn’t take an ivy league degree or validation from people to start becoming a learner rather than someone worrying about the next test you have. If you just think about all the graduates from your school in your field you need to understand how people pick the needle out the haystack, you have to be unique. Having a degree at Columbia University  and having a degree at City College of New York with extra curriculars such as web applications  and websites can have the same value and end up working at the same place. You shouldn’t blame your circumstances as a learner  if you have online access because everything is online and in books so the only person holding yourself back is you even if the world thinks you are a straight A student you know whether it’s from cheating or studying or actually knowing the material.

TOPIC 1 DRAFT 2 (AFTER EDITS)

Mohammad Bazal

9/13/2022

Professor Oliva Wood 

Unit 1: This I No Longer Believe

Illusions 

Growing up in a Pakistani family meant having parents with great expectations academically. The norm that my parents are accustomed to is that their child having good grades in school will lead them to becoming an engineer, a doctor or a lawyer because those are the professions that make a healthy living. These ideas instilled to my siblings and I created a standard that others would see as a reach-  having perfect scores going to any ivy league and ultimately going to law and med school. As the youngest in the family I couldn’t believe my brother’s journey from a public school to an ivy school while he still went out, played sports with his friends, and had time to play video games too. These observations lead me to believe that the society’s norms are just illusions.

Going into middle school there was a sense of responsibility of doing all the homework and getting all the work in because if you didn’t you would fall back, the idea of school has always been trying to get the best grade or even getting a passing grade to move forward. Chasing these high grades has always been the priority, which influenced cheating. You would always look around the room during the test and people would either be cheating with other people or even online. It wasn’t that these people didn’t know the material, it was the pressure of getting a 100 and being the best so you can go to a specialized high school that led them to cheat no matter what to guarantee success. When going into these high schools cheating was even more prevalent, everyone wanted to go into good colleges and associated college with their wage. 

  I too always cared about grades and made it my personality. I used to study for every test and right after I received a high grade I would start studying for the next test and forget about the last. I used to come home and show my report card to my parents and them praising me would be my dopamine. Something to prove was always my motive whether it was my siblings, parents or even my classmates. Showing society that I was successful just because I was doing good in school and that would keep translating as I progressed through the years. 

Now that I am in college, I finally understand that knowledge is what makes a person successful, it doesn’t matter how much you study just for a test and forget it after a year. It’s about gaining and building knowledge, if you cheated you cheated yourself in the future. Someone who cheated in a math beginning course could never keep going without cheating because without the basics you would be lost. This applies to working as well. You go into a job with an entry level and the return offer is off the work you do rather than some tests. Tests should be practiced if you have the knowledge in the field. 

Everyone wants you to believe that doing good in school has a direct relationship with success but as you can see with the top 1 percent build their own wealth with things that weren’t taught in school such as how to create your business or even having an online presence to build your brand. Examples of this is that all of the top 10 richest people in the world own business and made their name and brand out of nothing. The time you spend worrying about others can be used to create something unique and become the person you always dreamt of. It ok though, ,ajority have these misconceptions, a piece of paper shouldn’t be your degree or validation as personal skills get you places in life. Personally as a computer science major I know that these a+ in classes that aren’t related to computer science won’t help me in the real setting and I should have realized this before in high school and in my free time would have started coding to learn and expand my knowledge. The illusion of school is really dangerous. It puts your mind in a cycle that you wake up at the same time everyday, go to the same classes five days a week, do homework when you come home and the free time before sleep is for your free time. The weekend is for the family as your parents and you are off work so you can hangout for two days. That 7 day schedule is your life from the ages of 4-18 you learned how to follow rules and believed that you were ahead in life by doing these things. Nowhere in that schedule did you gain any skills and knowledge to use in the real world. You are always considered a child and suddenly you are labeled an adult at a random age in the 20s depending on your circumstances and the society around you. 

Breaking out this cycle of illusions thrown by the world is what helps you self evaluate and you decide how you want to spend your time and efforts to change the world or even have self goals is the key for self discovery. Everyone will tell you what to do because they have been told what to do in which you will break this cycle. As a freshman in college this cycle was ultimately broken as I got to choose my classes and when my free time is to go to the gym, study while having free time for entertainment and most importantly time to hone my skills and knowledge in the computer science field. Working as your own boss makes you think out of the norm and at the end of the day you realize that the future is near and without planning you will fall into the cycle of a 9-5 that doesn’t pay enough for all your desires because you never put the work in.

It doesn’t take an ivy league degree or validation from people to start becoming a learner rather than someone worrying about the next test you have. If you just think about all the graduates from your school in your field you need to understand how people pick the needle out the haystack, you have to be unique. Having a degree at columbia and having a degree at ccny with extra circulars such as apps and websites can have the same value and end up working at the same place. You shouldn’t blame your circumstances as a learner because at the end of the day everything is online and in books so the only person holding yourself back is you even if the world thinks you are a straight A student you know whether it’s from cheating or studying or actually knowing the material.

TOPIC 1 DRAFT 1 (BEFORE EDITS)

Mohammad Bazal

9/13/2022

Professor Oliva Wood 

Unit 1: This I No Longer Believe

Illusions 

Growing up in a Pakistani family meant having parents with great expectations, academically and culturally. The norm that my parents are accustomed to is that their child having good grades in school will lead them to becoming an engineer, a doctor or a lawyer because those are the professions that make a healthy living. These ideas instilled to my siblings and I created a standard that others would see as a reach-  having perfect scores going to any ivy league and ultimately going to law and med school. As the youngest in the family I couldn’t believe my brother’s journey from a public school to an ivy school while he still went out, played sports with his friends, and had time to play video games too. These observations lead me to believe that the society’s norms are just illusions.

Going into middle school there was a sense of responsibility of doing all the homework and getting all the work in because if you didn’t you would fall back, the idea of school has always been trying to get the best grade or even getting a passing grade to move forward. Chasing these high grades has always been the priority which influenced cheating. You would always look around the room during the test and people would either be cheating with other people or even online. It wasn’t that these people didn’t know the material, it was the pressure of getting a 100 and being the best so you can go to a specialized high school that led them to cheat no matter what to guarantee success. When going into these high schools cheating was even more prevalent, everyone wanted to go into good colleges and associated college with their wage. 

  I too always cared about grades and made it my personality. I used to study for every test and right after I received a high grade I would start studying for the next test and forget about the last. I used to come home and show my report card to my parents and them praising me would be my dopamine. Something to prove was always my motive whether it was my siblings, parents or even my classmates. Showing society that I was successful just because I was doing good in school and that would keep translating as I progressed through the years. 

Now that I am in college, I finally understand that knowledge is what makes a person successful, it doesn’t matter how much you study just for a test and forget it after a year. It’s about gaining and building knowledge, if you cheated you cheated yourself in the future. Someone who cheated in a math beginning course could never keep going without cheating because without the basics you would be lost. This applies to working as well. You go into a job with an entry level and the return offer is off the work you do rather than some tests. Tests should be practiced if you have the knowledge in the field. 

Everyone wants you to believe that doing good in school has a direct relationship with success but as you can see with the top 1 percent build their own wealth with things that weren’t taught in school such as how to create your business or even having an online presence to build your brand. Examples of this is that all of the top 10 richest people in the world own business and made their name and brand out of nothing. The time you spend worrying about others can be used to create something unique and become the person you always dreamt of. It ok though, ,ajority have these misconceptions, a piece of paper shouldn’t be your degree or validation as personal skills get you places in life. Personally as a computer science major I know that these a+ in classes that aren’t related to computer science won’t help me in the real setting and I should have realized this before in high school and in my free time would have started coding to learn and expand my knowledge. The illusion of school is really dangerous. It puts your mind in a cycle that you wake up at the same time everyday, go to the same classes five days a week, do homework when you come home and the free time before sleep is for your free time. The weekend is for the family as your parents and you are off work so you can hangout for two days. That 7 day schedule is your life from the ages of 4-18 you learned how to follow rules and believed that you were ahead in life by doing these things. Nowhere in that schedule did you gain any skills and knowledge to use in the real world. You are always considered a child and suddenly you become an adult at a random age in the 20s. 

Breaking out this cycle of illusions thrown by the world is what helps you self evaluate and you decide how you want to spend your time and efforts to change the world or even have self goals is the key for self discovery. Everyone will tell you what to do because they have been told what to do in which you will break this cycle. As a freshman in college this cycle was ultimately broken as I got to choose my classes and when my free time is to go to the gym, study while having free time for entertainment and most importantly time to hone my skills and knowledge in the computer science field. Working as your own boss makes you think out of the norm and at the end of the day you realize that the future is near and without planning you will fall into the cycle of a 9-5 that doesn’t pay enough for all your desires because you never put the work in.

It doesn’t take an ivy league degree or validation from people to start becoming a learner rather than someone worrying about the next test you have. If you just think about all the graduates from your school in your field you need to understand how people pick the needle out the haystack, you have to be unique. Having a degree at columbia and having a degree at ccny with extra circulars such as apps and websites can have the same value and end up working at the same place. You shouldn’t blame your circumstances as a learner because at the end of the day everything is online and in books so the only person holding yourself back is you even if the world thinks you are a straight A student you know whether it’s from cheating or studying or actually knowing the material.