In “Back to the Future 2”, 2015 was theorized to have amazing technology such as automatic size-adjusting clothes, hoverboards and other out-of-this-world ideas. And believe it or not, a lot of the tech has come to life now, three years after the movie was set. But with all this automation and connectivity, is there such a thing as too much technology? Absolutely.

Yes, technology has connected and advanced us as a society, but we forget the subtle nuances that might mean we’re getting too reliant on technology.

Kids nowadays would rather play inside, watching Youtube videos or playing the latest video game, which isn’t the safest form of entertainment in more ways than one. And parents around the country, to pacify their children, would gladly let them. Children should be outside exercising and socializing with other children.

But this problem of our reliance on technology doesn’t stop with how children are raised, but also how we function in work and even daily life. Technology makes things easy and convenient for companies and organizations, like schools. That isn’t being debated. But what if there were a power outage or something wrong with their software, which happens a lot, what would these organizations do?

To be honest, they would put their effort into fixing the technical issue or wait it out if there’s nothing that can be done. These companies and organizations, no matter how big or influential they are, are reduced to children with their thumbs in their mouths due to malfunctioning technology. It’s almost like the thing keeping these companies going is the technology and that was the only thing keeping them going.

Even technology as simple as a light bulb has greatly affected our lives, and not all of it for the better. A blog post by Posturepedic says we have lost four hours of sleep due to the ability to work and travel during the night. But technology doesn’t only affect sleep hours; schools and workplaces cancel a day of study or work just because their lights won’t work. Just a couple weeks ago, on Oct. 25, Skyline canceled its classes for that reason.

And it doesn’t stop with just our work. Our personal lives have shifted as well. Those who live in the U.S. will know about the new presidential text alerts. This begs the question, has the government known my information all this time, and what do they know? Privacy has now come back into question, but with this more-connected world, it’s a question that will never be definitively answered, but it should always be asked.

The benefits of a more transparent society are very clear: easier detection of crime and such, but is it worth all that’s being sacrificed? People are talented and desperate enough to figure out how to steal other people’s identity and information from basically nothing. Imagine what would happen if all this valuable information was in one place. Of course it’ll be secured, but nothing is unbreakable. Hackers can still find a way to crack it open.

Of course, we can’t do anything to stop the advancement of technology, and we shouldn’t. But what we should do is be more cautious with what we let our children play with and what information our social media attains, and keep back-up plans and physical files of what we can so if the system goes down, we don’t have to wait for it to come back and halt our work.

Technology is doing a lot to benefit us and with it becoming more advanced every day, we need to recognize its importance. But that doesn’t mean we have to let it take over our way of living. We’re the ones in control and we’re the ones to dictate how these things should function, not the other way around.