Role Of Technology In Fahrenheit 451

Over the course of a couple hundred years, technology has advanced rapidly as corporations try to keep up with consumers hastily implementing it into their day-to-day lives. Although technology has mainly made everyday life conditions easier, it has also caused complications. More specifically, complications that involve adverse changes in people’s mental health. As a result, there have been more efforts to bring awareness to the issues occurring due to the superfluous use of technology. For instance, Ray Bradbury, an author and avid critic of technology, has written many short stories and novels with storylines that expose the possible, and present issues that occur as a result of excessive consumption of technology. One of Bradbury’s novels

In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury depicts a society in which the citizens are glued to their TV’s and other devices. More specifically, this is portrayed as the main character, Montag, notes how his wife Mildred had not gone a night, for over two years, without staying up until the early mornings listening to “an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in” (Bradbury 10). This reveals just how addicted to the media Mildred is. She is so dependent on her device that she cannot tear herself away from it even to sleep. This is not just specific to her; this overabundance of technology use is viewed as normal to society. This connects with the real world today as technology has not only become a prerequisite in many people’s day-to-day professional and educational lives but also in their pastime. Much like Mildred, many people struggle with putting their devices away even when they have other things they should be doing. An example of this is exhibited in a New York Times article that interviews Kord Campbell, a tech-savvy businessman, about how technology affects his life professionally and personally. The

Mental health problems that include addiction, changes in emotional empathy for others, and the shortening of attention spans which are linked to ADHD. All of these aspects of mental health are intertwined and directly correlated to the large-scale usage of technology in both the story and the modern world. The consequences of abusing the amount of technology people use are surfacing more and more as time goes on. Consequences that, if not addressed, may have a permanent negative impact on societies mental health's and corresponding functions. Although the world today may not exactly be at such an extreme level as Fahrenheit 451’s society yet, it is much closer than people