Life in Italy vs. Life in the United States: Technology

Throughout my many observations of Italian culture, I found that technology was never a staple of daily life like it is in America. Although there was a computer in the house, my home stay father only turned it on for work or to find out things about Maine and where I lived. Federico had a smartphone, and both he and Eli had video games they liked to play, but for the most part the daily focus was away from the technology surrounding us. Contrary to sometimes popular belief, Italy is a technologically advanced society. They share almost all instances of technology that we have, including smart phones, computers, and internet access. I found it interesting to compare America, a technologically advanced and dependent society, to an are like Italy that, although technically advanced, was not as fixated on electronics. In America, nearly 75% of all households have and use the internet, while in Italy a similar study yields only 50% of the Italian population have internet in the home. Our American way of life has evolved over the years to give us the best access to all of the things we as Americans have to come to see with the "American dream." Italy is still a developing nation and does not always have access to many of these things. In 2013, 60% of Americans owned a smartphone, while only 41% of Italians were smartphone owners. From all of these statistics, as well as my experience through my home stay, I was able to assume that both Italy and America were technologically advanced, but in many ways Italian technology access was still lacking behind that of the United States.

Orion Takes a Picture of the Statue of David