Should we think of time as the 4th dimension?

Is thinking of time as a dimension a helpful or harmful metaphor? Here is why I ask.

If I face the rising sun, I can move freely forward or backward in the East/West dimension. Likewise, I can sidestep to the North or South, or turn and walt that way. If I get in a hot air balloon I can move in the Z axis, ascending into the air. If I dig a hole or descend into a cave, I can travel downward on the Z axis.

But the only way I find to easily move through time is to just sit in my moving place in it. Without flying at a fantastic rate of speed, I can’t move through time any faster than the Great Smoky Mountains travel through it, or than Stonehenge’s ancient monoliths move through it.

I don’t think technology is going to someday dramatically change this, freeing us to travel forward or backward through time just as we do the X-Y-Z dimensions. I say this because if time travel ever becomes possible, people from that future time should already have the technology. They ought to be popping into our own time now and then, but we don’t meet time travelers—well at least those of us who are relatively sane do not.

So does claiming that time is just another dimension serve to clarify or confuse our understanding of this mysterious measure of the Universe we live in?