In our day and age, technology is a need in our everyday life. In the essence of communication, the manufacturing of business and education work, and the overall transportation of informative goods, technology is a must. Don't get me wrong; the materialism regarding cell-phone and digital media is absurd, and has been taken to a point of needless and continuous upgrades. For example, an American adult (18+) spends 2 hours, 51 minutes on their smartphone every day. That is almost 3 hours of phone usage, most likely used for the singularity of social communication. In addition, it is noted that from 2016 to 2017, consumers have spent 55 billion USD in an effort to purchase new smartphones. My personal average carbon footprint for purchases was low, as I only spent around a thousand dollars on material objects a year, but imagine having number like 55 BILLION - this kind of number must take part in massive amounts of Carbon emissions throughout the manufacturing and purchasing efforts.
   In order to make sufficient changes, people have to make smarter purchases. Instead o f buying something because it is a litlle bit better than their previous device, one should wait until their previous device becomes obsolete or nonfunctional. This way, people are saving money and making less of a Carbon footprint. I believe that the technology is a need, but it's a need that can be adjusted to cause less problems.
Sources:
  https://www.finder.com/iphone-sales-statistics
https://hackernoon.com/how-much-time-do … f90a0b10a6