3 news december

The ProwlerDEC. 6, 2012 3NEWS

Is technology a new drug?

Violations vacate VillageContinued from page 1

In 19th century clothes, children re-enact candle making for visitors to Dickens Village. Ryan Phillips/Staff

Justin Doil’14 and Antonio Santiago’14 Staff Writers

candle-making activities. Volunteers filling all sorts of roles gather at the Heritage campus on Bernhard Road this time of the year to spread holiday cheer and give something back to the community. Fultz said he and church elder Robert Carroll received the no-tice after members of the church set up the village. “Fayette County told us we must obtain a permit before we can hold the event again,” Car-

roll said. Carroll said they were forced to make the diffi-cult decision to cancel the seasonal event because they didn’t have enough time to address the codes issues. The village had been sched-uled for Nov. 30-Dec. 2 and this weekend. Carroll said part of the issue is that the Permit De-partment didn’t know how to categorize their event. Last year more than 9,000 people visited Dickens

Village, and during the last 10 years, more than 50,000 people stopped by, Carroll said. The cancellation caught not only church members by surprise, but many fac-ulty members and students. Guidance counselor Paula O’Shields has volun-teered as a villager. “I am so disappointed that we can’t do it because of safety problems with the buildings and structures,” O’Shields said.

Senior Daniel Sims has also been a part of the Dickens tradition. “I was disappointed to hear it was canceled,” Sims said. “I know how many people enjoyed coming to get into the holiday spirit.” Carroll, however, said that all might not be lost. They are trying to get ap-proval from the county to hold a tree lighting ceremo-ny in the heart of the village later this month.

Sitting in Charlotte Rob-inson’s AP U.S. History class, junior Sammie Bauer uses her iPhone

to research information about the events leading up to the Civil War. Since the introduction of Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) this year students like Bauer for the first time can use their per-sonal devices during school hours for class-related activities. All of this access to technology during the day begs the question: Are students and adults too wired to technology?

Plugged into technology 24/7 According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit organi-zation that specializes in health policy analysis, the average teen listens to 2.5 hours of music each day, watches around 5 hours of TV, spends 3 hours on the Internet or playing video games, but only spends 38 minutes reading.

“I absolutely think that we are too obsessed with technology,” junior Amelia Hammond said. “Every single detail of everyone’s life is splashed on social media from the day they are born to the day they die.” In an article by techliberation.com, a website dedicated to keep-ing government censorship off the internet, the social media giant Twitter reported that users send 500 million tweets per day, an average of 600 tweets per second. “The first thing I do after I eat breakfast in the morning is get onto Twitter,” junior Kyle Mitchell said. “I tweet my friends

and followers and anyone who follows me, I follow back.” The arrival of social media web-sites such as Facebook and Twit-ter have made getting legitimate news harder to get as well.

News information confusion Young people now are using non credible sources to get the majority of their information. “A danger of being constantly connected to technology is many young people can’t form their own opinions or make up their own minds,” guidance counselor Paula O’Shields said. “One example of this would

have to be the presidential elec-tion. Instead of watching the debates and forming their own opinions, people can just go onto the Internet and get trapped by a biased blog and take that for the truth,” O’Shields said.

Social media causes distractions Besides not being a credible source of information, social me-dia is also an easy distraction. “Usually every night I get onto Reddit and before I know it I will look at my phone and see that hours have passed without me getting off,” Hammond said.

Health risks of being too wired Ever since the introduction of the first mass produced car by Henry Ford, society has been moving less and sitting more. This now poses a serious threat to our national health. In 2011, the Center for Disease Control conducted a survey and found that 28 percent of Geor-gians are obese. “By 2030 more than half of Americans could be obese, result-ing in millions of new cases of

diabetes, coronary heart disease, and stroke—a constellation of illness that could cost the United States up to $66 billion in treat-ment and over $500 billion in lost economic productivity,” accord-ing to a recent ABC News article. Besides becoming less active, young people are losing their abil-ity to go out and play in the yard, choosing to stay inside instead. “Kids today have become a lot more sedentary,” O’Shields said. Too many young people don’t know how to use their imagina-tion. They let the games they play think for them.” Besides the health risks, many teens are losing the ability to properly communicate with oth-ers. “If I had the choice to either call someone or text them I would choose to text them,” freshman Ryan Roper said. “It is much easier and faster to text someone rather than talking to them.” Are we too wired? Take The Prowler’s technology poll at thep-rowlernews.org to get involved in the discussion and have your voice heard.

Graphic by Dimitri Porzio