“We’re not just walking wounded, we’re walking dead men,” says Colonel Grady in Fail-Safe right before his team of bombers bomb Moscow and commit suicide simultaneously. Within Fail-Safe man’s trust in technology causes millions to die as an attack order is transmitted to a group of six Vindicator supersonic bombers through a technical failure. Fail-Safe was written as a warning to mankind on the dangers of overreliance on technology. Now in the year of 2014 this problem has come true. Education for an average American has fallen, health for the typical American has plunged, and distractions for a regular American has soared.

Technology replaces knowledge. As technology improves human learning decreases. With the Internet at a couple seconds away within the nearest iPhone, iPad, or Mac computer, who would actually try to learn the information? Students these days have trouble spelling simple words such as accommodate, ecstasy, and tattoo.

In 2012 students all over the world partook in PISA an international testing survey to see how each country’s education compared. The United States scored 37th overall in mathematics, 24th in reading, and 28th in science out of 65 different countries. Despite the U.S.’s amazing economy they still were situated under the OECD or The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development average. The OECD states “this is most probably the cause of students in America having too much access to the Internet.” All in all as a result of an improvement and increase in technology the younger generation has become more slow-witted. Not only that but also this generation will later teach the next generation and so on in what is to be a terrible cycle in human intellectual decline.

Health in America drops constantly as technology intrudes more and more into the average person’s lifestyle. More and more Americans become “couch potatoes” every day. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention or CDC, obesity now affects 17% of all children and adolescents in the United States, which is, triple the rate from just one generation ago. The cause is painfully obvious. Kids are eating and drinking too many calories, and they’re not getting enough physical exercise. The CDC also states that children from 8 to 18 years of age spend an average of 7.5 hours a day using entertainment media — TV, computers, video games, cell phones and movies. Kids themselves spend about 4.5 hours of that time watching TV. No one should be especially surprised if some day everyone becomes like the tubby humans in the movie Wall-E.

Introversion. Too many Americans today are becoming introverts or recluses. While the Internet and mobile devices have made accessing useful information easy and have exponentially increased our efficiency in locating, reading, and disseminating quality information, human beings have lost their touch with the present. Many people have become unable to separate themselves from technology whether for 2 minutes or 2 hours. They constantly seem content to ‘do’ something on their phones rather than ‘be’ present during many of their daily interactions and activities. Evidence of this can be found whenever someone is driving. Next time someone is at a stoplight. Look around and see how many people are on their phones.

It is the year 2014 and technology has taken over! Education for America is in shambles, health for Americans is steadily deteriorating, and distractions overbound. Just as Fail-Safe warned, Americans are relying too much on technology and just as technology caused millions of human lives within Fail-Safe so will technology do to America now. Chew on this last statement: A recent study in Australia found that, after age 25, every hour spent watching television reduces the viewer’s lifespan by 21.8 minutes. Next time you sit down to watch TV watch out!