Final Blog Post

My relationship with technology is something that I question often. As someone who is a part of Generation Z, I cannot remember a time when technology was not a part of my life. Through every year of grade school, through high school, and college, technology has been the basis upon which I learned. Social media has also become a large part of my life. From a young age, I began using Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, Twitter, etc. because it was popular, accessible, and most importantly, considered a valuable and fun way to communicate with people I knew or did not know. All of these factors have led me to where I am today; weighing the positives vs the negatives of technology. 

As a senior in college, I am extremely busy. With that being said, I somehow always make time in my day to check my phone or venture off of blackboard on my laptop onto youtube or any other platform. This is something I have become increasingly aware of in the last few years, especially through the pandemic when I had a hard time not being on my phone or laptop. As of this week, my screen time averages about four hours a day with messages, Snapchat, and TikTok being my most used applications on my phone. When I first read this, noticing that my average had gone down, I was pleased with myself, until I saw the average number of times I pick up my phone daily, 223 times. I find this to be a bit worrisome as my focus is easily shifted to the vast amount of information accessible at my fingertips. While this is all moderately negative, I would like to take into consideration the amount I have learned because of my access to technology. I also tend to spend a good amount of time reading articles from various sources and tuning into different streams of news in the media to always stay up to date with current events. While there is plenty of misleading information out there, there are various streams and sources for me to access daily to avoid getting trapped in echo chambers, constantly confronted by my ideas and opinions being reinforced time after time. I have also utilized technology for almost every aspect of my undergraduate college education. For any research paper in any class dealing with any subject matter, I have had a wealth of knowledge right at my fingertips for whatever I am looking to search for or write about.

Technology has also come in handy over the past year and a half with the surprise of the global pandemic, COVID-19. During covid-19, businesses, schools, etc. were shut down and life as we knew it effectively disappeared. The reason I was able to continue learning and working towards my bachelor's degree is technology. Online classes, no matter how bizarre or awkward they were, allowed me to continue my education. It is also the reason I was able to keep in contact with my friends and family no matter how far away they were. The constant access I had to any updates about lockdown measurements or updates were also available to me because of technology. Without technology and its advancements, I'm not sure that I as well as many other people I know would have made it through the pandemic. 

Of course, with every positive comes a negative. While I believe that technology is an important part of my life, it does scare me how attached I am as well as my entire generation is to technology. Technology has also become inescapable. Algorithms dictate what we see and technology is advancing past the confines of the human mind. All relationships, especially of people my age, are dictated and created/ accessed through technology. It is hard to imagine a life without technology because technology has become such an integral part of everyday mundane life. It also concerns me how big of a role it plays in the lives of my friends and family. While I have grown up learning about technology, a lot of it is new to older members of my family who are more susceptible to falling into some of the traps the internet creates like, echo chambers. The issue of privacy on the internet is another major concern I have for myself and my family as everything is monitored and tracked. Overall, I’m not sure if technology's effect on my life is entirely healthy or unhealthy. However, I do believe that I give technology far too much time in my life as factors of it sometimes distract me from any of my tasks at hand.