Technology

How Much Should We Rely on Technology?

Technology can make things easier for humans, but the ease of use might also lead to dependence.

Technology Is Part of Daily Life

It is hard to imagine how modern life would be without technology doing at least some of the work for humans. Cell phone reminders remind people about their appointments, maps show the way, search engines find information, calculators perform calculations, and computers work for hours to achieve a certain goal.

It is not surprising that people would want to rely on these tools, as they have been using objects as extensions of themselves for as long as human history can be traced. A calculator can do the arithmetic faster and more accurately than a person, a map provides information about a region that one could not know without first visiting it, and a calendar reminds people of events that they would otherwise have to remember.

What is different about modern technology is that it often does many things at once and can take over large parts of daily life. With a smartphone, one can store information, find one’s way, speak with other people, search for information, perform calculations, translate languages, manage schedules and organization, and have it recommend movies and music to watch and listen to. One can delegate almost all kinds of everyday tasks and even some cognitive processes to the device.

Asking whether technology is good or bad is not particularly helpful. It is more useful to think about how much of the workload is actually being delegated to it.

Convenience Makes People Rely on Technology

People naturally rely on convenient tools, especially when those tools can reduce the effort required to complete a task.

Cognitive offloading is the process of using an external information-processing resource to reduce the amount of information processing one has to perform internally. Smartphones and other mobile devices can function as such resources because they are usually available and ready to perform whatever task one asks of them. In a study conducted in 2020, participants were more likely to offload information onto their phones when the device’s interface made doing so easier (Grinschgl et al., 2020).

This does not mean that the participants’ cognitive capacity had permanently decreased because of their smartphone use. It may simply have been the case that they did not see a reason to memorize the information when the device could store it for them. There is little point in remembering a phone number if it can reside in the contact list of a phone that one already uses, and there may be little reason to memorize unfamiliar roads when a map application can provide directions.

The more important question is whether delegating everyday tasks to one’s devices means eliminating the need to practice those abilities entirely.

If a person no longer practices a skill because a tool can perform the task for them, they may have fewer opportunities to maintain that skill.

That distinction matters. It is unlikely that the ability to count is permanently lost after learning to use a calculator, but someone who rarely performs calculations manually may have less practice doing them. Similarly, a person who always uses GPS may have fewer opportunities to practice navigating unfamiliar places without it.

Technology Can Be Used to One’s Advantage

It would be unfair to treat reliance on technology as entirely negative.

Its use can be genuinely beneficial for completing tasks that would otherwise take significantly more effort. Digital technologies can make information easier to find and share, make communication easier, assist people in working and studying, and help people with disabilities function more independently.

Research into technology and cognition also does not suggest that cognitive offloading is always detrimental to cognitive abilities. A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis published in Nature Human Behaviour examined digital technology use and cognitive aging in adults over 50. The researchers found that technology use was associated with a lower risk of cognitive impairment and slower cognitive decline, although they noted that more research is needed to determine causal relationships (Benge & Scullin, 2025).

The positive impact can come from the fact that technology allows people to engage in a different activity than the one they would otherwise perform. Following the directions of a GPS system allows someone to reach a destination without learning the route beforehand, but that does not necessarily mean the person has lost the ability to read a map. Similarly, a person who uses search engines to find information online does not necessarily lose their ability to read or comprehend what they read, even though there may be less need to search for information without assistance.

The same reasoning applies to calculators, spell-checkers, and other forms of automation. The consequences depend on what the technology replaces and whether the underlying ability is still important to the person.

The issue becomes more significant when technology is no longer simply replacing a task, but becomes the only practical way for a person to perform it.

Technology does not necessarily eliminate an ability. It can decrease the need to use it.

Blind Trust in Technology Is Easy to Abuse

Reliance on technology becomes more complicated when it begins to make decisions for people rather than merely facilitate their own decisions.

Automation research has long examined the problems that can occur when people rely too heavily on automated systems. A review paper published in 2010 analyzed decades of research on automation complacency and automation bias, including situations where people may accept automated recommendations without sufficiently checking them or may overlook information that contradicts those recommendations (Parasuraman & Manzey, 2010).

The review highlighted research showing that automation bias can affect human performance in a variety of fields. People can accept an automated system’s suggestions without questioning them and can therefore be misled when the automation is imperfect. The review also noted that decision-support automation can either improve or reduce performance depending on the situation, because an incorrect suggestion can have a much larger negative effect than a correct suggestion improves performance (Parasuraman & Manzey, 2010; Wickens et al., 2015).

This makes it important to distinguish between using a calculator to verify an answer and completely relying on it to solve a mathematical problem. The former keeps the person involved in the calculation, while the latter transfers most of the task to the technology. Over time, repeatedly outsourcing a skill can reduce the opportunities to practice it.

A similar principle applies to navigation systems. Getting stuck on a road because of incorrect directions can be corrected if a person recognizes that the suggested route does not make sense. Basic knowledge of the surroundings, directions, or road system can help identify the problem. When navigation is completely delegated to a GPS system, however, the person may have less opportunity to develop or maintain those skills.

The same principle applies to search engines. A person can simply ask Google for an answer to a question, but understanding how to evaluate and analyze information remains important because the information provided by a search engine is not automatically correct simply because it appears in the results.

When technology is used incorrectly or trusted too much, the person may not realize that something has gone wrong because they have not exercised enough of their own knowledge to recognize the error.

Using Technology Without Losing the Skill

The goal should not necessarily be to reduce reliance on technology. That would be counterproductive because many technologies designed to assist with specific tasks have already become part of daily life.

People should, however, maintain enough of their own skills to perform important tasks when assistance is unavailable.

The same 2020 study suggests that cognitive offloading decisions are partially influenced by the cognitive costs of the alternative. People are more likely to delegate a task to their smartphone when doing so is easy (Grinschgl et al., 2020). Using information technology to find information is much less effortful than trying to remember it, which helps explain why people are likely to choose the easier option.

As mentioned above, reducing the need to use one’s own cognitive abilities is not necessarily harmful as long as those abilities remain sufficiently practiced for the situations where they are needed. That is why someone who wants to learn how to navigate independently should not rely exclusively on GPS directions. Someone who wants to improve their writing should not completely depend on spell-checking. Someone who wants to learn how to find and evaluate information should not simply accept the first answer provided by Google.

Knowing how to perform these tasks independently can make a person more capable when technology is unavailable or unreliable. Technology can also become more useful when a person has at least some understanding of the task it is helping with.

For instance, it is not necessary to know how a GPS satellite works to use a navigation application. However, learning how to read a map and plan a route can make someone more capable of using navigation technology effectively. The same principle applies to calculators, spell-checkers, search engines, and other forms of automation. The more knowledge a person has about the underlying task, the easier it can be to identify mistakes in the result.

That becomes particularly important with increasingly complex automation and artificial intelligence applications. An AI system can provide an answer, recommendation, summary, or other result, but the person using it still needs enough understanding to determine whether that result makes sense.

Technology Can Become a Crutch

Concern about reliance on technology becomes legitimate when a person no longer has the ability or confidence to perform an important task without it.

There is a clear difference between preferring not to do a task because a tool can do it faster and being unable to do it because the tool has always done it for you.

This distinction is useful because it is easy to be concerned about the wrong problem. Someone can use a GPS system every day without ever realizing that they could also learn how to read a map and plan a route without it. Someone can ask Google for an answer to every question without considering whether the information they receive is accurate. A study published in 2020 suggests that people’s offloading decisions are often influenced by the convenience of the alternative (Grinschgl et al., 2020).

That does not make the decision wrong, however, because it is natural for people to seek ways to reduce the cognitive effort required to perform a task. The problem emerges when a tool reduces the overall cognitive load to the point that a person no longer engages their own skills, even when those skills remain useful.

How Much Should We Rely on Technology?

There is no universally correct answer to the question of how much people should rely on technology.

Context is crucial because it is important to consider what exactly is being relied upon and what is being given up by relying on it. Asking whether people should rely on technology is not particularly useful by itself. Asking what they gain from its use and what abilities they may no longer practice is more informative.

If technology replaces repetitive or monotonous tasks, makes life significantly easier, improves accessibility, or helps someone stay organized, that reliance can be useful. If it eliminates the opportunity to maintain an important skill without providing another way to practice it, the consequences may be different.

The relationship between humans and technology does not have to be adversarial. Technology can make people more capable, but people still need to maintain enough knowledge and skill to understand, evaluate, and use the technology effectively.