Shannon Carr - wordpress
People are becoming extremely lazy in their households these days due to the great advancements in technology. 93 percent of people go online everyday. Macale poses a few questions to prove the point of laziness in today’s society, “Why throw a grilled cheese sandwich on an actual grill when you can just toss it into an automatic sandwich maker? Why have mom over to show off your new apartment when you can just pop into FaceTime for a quick video chat? Why drive over to the library when you can pull up Wikipedia or do a Google search? In fact, why open a window when we can check the weather on our phone?” (Macale 1). It has been proven that people are becoming lazy even when they are just sitting at their computers. Even teens are being lazy on their computers. 69 percent of teens today own their own computer. People do not simply change their password when it expires; they change one number or letter to make it easier on themselves. They are too lazy to remember or write down a whole new word. A lot of times, people will ignore the fact that their computer needs a software update. They will wait until it is in desperate need of an update before they do it and they would rather wait than go out of their way to do it when they are surfing the web or doing research. At home, people have become very lazy because there are so many new pieces of technology that can make things so much easier. People are also able to check in with loved ones without really checking in because they can just send them a text message and not have to see them face-to-face. There are also a lot of people who are too lazy to cook for themselves and their families so they get take out from a restaurant or make a pre-made meal. There is a lot of online shopping that goes on these days. Some people even order their groceries online so they do not have to go to the store to get them. They have them delivered every week. People can get entertainment from staying on their couch, so they do not leave the house. They can watch television and go on a computer without having to get up at all. 63 percent of people have cable TV today and watch it
whenever they are in a room with a television in it. 33 percent of those people are watching it ten
hours or more a week. A lot of times, people do not even pick up the morning paper because they can just get the news on the Internet or on TV. Without all of the advances made in technology, people would have to do a lot more work around the house in order to get things done.
According to a study by the University of Waterloo in Ontario, smartphones are making it easier for us to avoid thinking for ourselves.
BBC - is my smartphone making me stupid
In 2015, researchers found that smartphone users who are intuitive thinkers (meaning they are more likely to rely on gut feelings and instincts when making a decision) would frequently make use of their phone’s search engine to find a solution rather than their own brainpower.
According to the study’s co-lead author Gordon Pennycook, this means people “may look up information that they actually know or could easily learn, but are unwilling to make the effort to actually think about it”.
Analytical thinkers, however, are more prone to second-guess themselves and analyse a problem more logically. These type of smartphone users spent less time using their devices search engine, the study found.
Lowered intelligence
According to Pennycook, the research “provides support for an association between heavy smartphone use and lowered intelligence”.
He added, however, that it was an “open question” whether or not smartphones actually decreased intelligence, and further study was needed.
The study’s other co-lead author, Nathaniel Barr, pointed out that “our reliance on smartphones and other devices will likely only continue to rise”.
According to “decades of research”, Barr added, “human are eager to avoid expending effort when problem-solving and it seems likely that people will increasingly use their smartphones as an extended mind”.
7 reasons smartphones make us lazy - Charles Crawford
We’ve invented apps… That do this for us. An app like TaskRabbit can connect anyone with money to people who will clean your house, shop for you… even assemble new furniture.
A local help app Zaarly helps you find someone to bake a cake for you.
An app called FastCustomer will actually connect you with people… who will wait on customer service’s hold for you. Then get back in touch with you when waiting times are done.
I mean, really? Really? People in the world actually get paid to wait on hold? I can understand these services for executives or people who are busy developing apps that (gasp!) help the world. But, personally, for the life of me… I can’t understand how people can be so lazy.
Such is the craze of the digital age.
Your smartphone is making you lazy - tesh.com
Are smartphone apps making us the laziest society in history?
Today, a growing number of smartphone apps make it easy to hire someone else to run all of our errands, and do all of our chores! For example:
- There’s TaskRabbit, which connects you to people who’ll do anything from clean your house, to shop for groceries, or assemble new furniture.
- Too lazy to bake a cake for your boyfriend’s birthday? The local-help app Zaarly will help you find someone to bake it for you within an hour.
- Hate waiting on hold for customer service? The app FastCustomer will wait on hold for you until someone picks up.
- With an app called Cherry, you can hire someone to come and wash your car.
Fans of these apps say they help people save time, and create new job opportunities for people who need work. But psychology professor Larry Rosen disagrees. He says the apps are making it too easy to be anti-social and lazy! He says mobile devices make us “socially isolated” because we no longer need to have face-to-face interactions, or even voice-to-voice. After all, when you can unload your chores with the swipe of a finger, it makes picking up the phone seem like hard work!
Rosen says that’s bad news, because research shows that simple face-to-face interactions, like saying “hello” to the cashier at the grocery store, are good for our psychological health. Plus, experts say some chores can have a “deeper purpose” that provide happiness and meaning to your life. Like baking a cake for your boyfriend shows you took the time to do something special – and it means something to him, but that gets lost if you outsource it to an app!
As a result, people spend an average of just three to five minutes at their computer working on the task at hand before switching to Facebook or another enticing website or, with phone beside them, a mobile app. The most pernicious effect of the frenetic, compulsive task switching that smartphones facilitate is to impede the achievement of goals, even small everyday ones. “You can’t reach any complex goal in three minutes,” Rosen said. “There have always been distractions, but while giving in used to require effort, like getting up and making a sandwich, now the distraction is right there on your screen.”
The constant competition for our attention from all the goodies on our phone and other screens means that we engage in what a Microsoft scientist called “continuous partial attention.” We just don’t get our minds deeply into any one task or topic. Will that have consequences for how intelligent, creative, clever, and thoughtful we are? “It’s too soon to know,” Rosen said, “but there is a big experiment going on, and we are the lab rats.”
It seems there are apps to do almost anything--bring you food, run your errands, pick you up and more.
Now, a new startup called Yoshi will send someone to fill up your car with gas.
With all the apps that aim to make your life more convenient, it poses the question-- are we just becoming lazier?
“Folks will choose the path of least resistance when faced with two choices, you will usually do or almost always do what’s easiest,” says MSU Denver marketing professor Darrin Duber-Smith.
It seems the only finger lifting we have to do is a few taps on a screen to get what we want. We have Uber and Lyft for when you need a ride. If you want food delivered straight to your door, you can use Door Dash or Postmates. And, now there is even an app that will have someone stand in line for you at the DMV. That company is YoGov, and they are based out of California.
Enter a San Francisco start-up called Shyp, which is expanding to New York on Monday. For a small fee, it fetches, boxes and mails parcels for you. The other week, I had a get-well package to mail to my cousin. I opened the app, snapped a photo of the items I wanted to send and entered her address. Fifteen minutes later, someone was at my door — and that was it. No boxes, no tape, no weighing, no buying stamps, no standing in line.
Are Shyp and similar tech start-ups for outsourcing chores the realization of the laziness economy? Or are they the opposite — a giant step toward unleashing the human productivity and creativity that technologists have prophesied?
Technology has conditioned us to expect ease, efficiency and speed in almost everything we do. Once it came from sewing machines and dishwashers, later from Google and Kayak, and most recently from start-ups that provide on-demand services like Uber for cars, Instacart for groceries and Munchery for dinner.
Now, even waiting in line at Starbucks is considered inefficient and necessitates an app to pre-order a latte.
There is evidence that technology has already made household chores much less time-consuming. Parents together now spend 27.6 hours a week on chores, down from 36.3 in 1965, according to data from the American Time Use Survey and Pew Research Center. Some of their new free time is being spent on their children. They spend 20.8 hours a week on child care, up from 12.7 in 1965.
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