Technology is omnipresent. These days, you can attend a Dallas Cowboys football game and watch some of the biggest television in the world, instantly download a new song from iTunes to your computer, or Google search for trivia about your TV show favorite via your new smartphone. People like to get things done in the quickest and most efficient way; technology allows everyone to do both at the same time. The world needs to look beyond these tempting and positive attributes of technology and look at the effects that are not so appealing. Children are born into a society that relies on technology for professional and personal reasons and they legitimately do not know a time without it. Technology causes problems in their social skills and behaviors and facilitates a drastic increase in childhood obesity rates. Are parents and older generation neglecting their ethical duties? Do you want to tell your friends about the movie you just saw? A few keystrokes on any keyboard or phone and a click of a button can achieve this; in total, the process only takes about thirty seconds. What if you wanted to download Jennifer Lopez's new song to your iPod? Don't worry, this process is just as quick as the first. Such events today are very common in the lives of children aged eight to eighteen years old. Technology has given them the ability to do this sort of thing very quickly, but it turns out to create a bad cycle among younger users. Leigh Goessl, a writer for Helium's online business and an MBA in technology, explains that technology encourages instant gratification (Goessl 2). As described earlier, children are accustomed to getting what they want instantly through technology, and this... middle of paper ...... all problems torment children everywhere; helping a child be independent today and avoid future dependence on these machines. Works Cited Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). April 21, 2011. Data and statistics – obesity rates among all children in the United States. National Health and Nutrition Examination. Goessl, Leigh. February 21, 2010. Advantages and disadvantages of technology for children. Helium - Where knowledge reigns. 1-2.Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). January 20, 2010. M2 – The media in the daily lives of 8-18 year olds. Media and Health Studies Program. 2-39.Skeele, R. and Stefankiewicz, G. 2002. Blackbox in the sandbox: The decision to use technology with young children with an annotated bibliography of Internet resources for teachers of young children. Educational Technology Review, [Online series], 10(2), 79 - 86.