Band 8 model answer: opinion (agree or disagree)

A decade ago, ordering dinner meant phoning a single pizza restaurant; now an app like Grab in Singapore or Swiggy in India puts three hundred restaurants on one screen with a rider arriving in twenty minutes. This shift has clear causes, and while it brings genuine convenience, I believe its overall social effect is negative. The trend is driven by two forces. First, urban working hours have lengthened: a Bangalore software engineer putting in eleven-hour days simply has no time to cook, and delivery apps fill that gap. Second, the apps themselves manufacture demand through subsidies and gamified discounts, so ordering becomes habitual rather than occasional, with users tapping the app for a single coffee rather than walking to the corner cafe. Despite this convenience, the negative consequences run deeper. Public health is one casualty: a 2022 study by the Indian Council of Medical Research linked rising urban obesity rates directly to the frequency of app-based food ordering, since delivery menus favour fried, calorie-dense items over home-cooked meals. Labour conditions are another concern. Riders for companies like Deliveroo in the UK are classified as independent contractors, paid per delivery rather than per hour, which pushes many to skip meals and race through red lights to hit unrealistic time targets, a trade-off consumers rarely see when they track their order on a map. Finally, the apps hollow out local social life: small family restaurants in cities like Manila now exist mainly as anonymous kitchen units on an app's back end, losing the walk-in customers who once knew the owner by name, which quietly erodes neighbourhood identity. Convenience alone does not offset these costs. The efficiency that delivery apps offer comes bundled with poorer diets, precarious gig work, and thinner community ties, and unless governments regulate rider pay and app-driven marketing, I expect these negative effects to outweigh the benefits as the trend continues to grow.