Information technology is changing many aspects of our lives and now dominates our home, leisure and work activities. To what extent do the benefits of information technology outweigh the disadvantages?

Because of the development of information technology, people's lives are changing in terms of many aspects, such as how to live, enjoy, and work. Information technology contributes to making people's activities more convenient, while they are consuming more and more energy and resources. On the one hand, information technologies, typically the internet and smartphones, have a huge impact on people's lives. With only a smartphone and an internet connection, people can purchase whatever they want online, go wherever they want to visit without a map, and even have a conversation with anyone no matter where he/she is around the world. According to a piece of recent research at Kyoto University, the number of business persons who had an online meeting at least once a week accounted for more than 50%. In other words, humans receive more advantages than disadvantages regarding convenience. On the other hand, today's society wastes countless amounts of energy and resources. What is more, this tendency is expected to be accelerated in the future all over the world. From an environmental aspect, people cannot simply welcome information technology without considering the disadvantages. As a matter of fact, the amount of energy the world consumes is rising year by year, leading to more and more CO2 emissions, destroying our planet, threatening people's lives. In other words, it can be said that because of the current convenient lives, people overlook such environmentally serious drawbacks. To conclude, although human civilization should not be denied, wasting a tremendous amount of energy and resources have to be stopped. Therefore, the world needs to develop more efficient technologies which consume less energy and resources.