Final Blog Post- My Relationship with Technology

My relationship with technology started in third grade, and I had to share a phone with my sister. My sister was in fifth grade, and you can imagine how unhappy she was about sharing her new phone with her little sister. My parents got us a phone because they worked a lot and wanted us to have one with our babysitter. I did not know then how much I know now about technology, but if I did, I would not have wanted a phone. Getting a phone changed everything; I thought I was the coolest person ever. I would always show it off to my friends and consistently play games on it. As I grew up and got my phone, I used it for its advantages. Around fifth grade, I started to get involved in different social media platforms. My friends and I would post funny videos and photos of ourselves with no care in the world. When I was that age, we just used it for fun. There was no point in it; it was just something to do. As we got older and social media started to pick up its popularity, so did my use of social media. Now it was all different. We were not posting just for fun but for people to see pictures of your life. Now it was more of a competition of who does what. No one will ever admit it, but there will always be competition between friends on social media today. 

 I used to give in to the temptation of competition. I would always see my friends doing cooler stuff than me; they always looked like they were always having fun. In reality, people post what they think other people will like. My relationship started very shaky because of how insecure I was growing up. Today, I have learned that it does not matter how many followers or likes you have because that is all fake. Those followers are not your real friends, and they are not real likes. I am pleased that I have matured out of that stage in my life, yet most people still think it is a competition. 

I spend more time on technology than I should. Now with apps like TikTok, it is so easy for people to get sucked into the “TikTok world” and never stop scrolling. TikTok is different from any other social media platform. Every video is thirty seconds, and you learn something new in every video. On the video to the left, it shows you how TiKTik creates videos for people. It allows people to learn new things in such a short period, and people love that. You never get bored because it is always something new, and people’s attention span has shortened due to TikTok. Technology is taking too much time; I could be doing much more productive things than watching videos on TikTok. Yet, even though I say and know I should spend more time off the technology, it still pulls me in.

Technology can make you smarter. Undoubtedly, people have gained a lot of intelligence since technology has improved. You can look anything up and get an answer right away. It opens a whole new world of opportunities for people to learn. Millions of different types of information have surfaced because of the internet and technology. Even though we have gained so much from technology, knowing what information is misleading is still challenging. You can take specific steps to ensure a website is reliable, yet people do not know how to do this. If people took the time to find out if the source is reliable, we would have less misleading information on the internet. 

I have a small online footprint since I do not post anything online, and all my social media accounts are private. Even though I say I have a small online print, I do not know because the internet could have a lot more on me. When I look me up, my Linkeln comes up; the rest is my mom and dad. My parents owned a business, so that is why there is so much information about them online. I want to grow my online presence to look for even more professional jobs. I do not want jobs to see my parents and associate me with my parents being successful business owners. I want to make an online presence of professionalism and want to make sure that my LinkedIn always stays at the top, so that is what employers want to see first. The image my online footprint shows is nothing except for my parents.

Lastly, I want to talk about the two videos we watched. The first video is about how technology improves our everyday life, and there are no wrong sides to technology. It predicted a world in which technology would be our savior, save us, comfort us, and solve our problems. It talks about how technology lets us explore the future, which is true. It also discusses ice testing and climate change, a huge problem today. They discuss deserts that make the water fresh from the sea for people to drink, new highways for people to transport more materials, etc. They talk about how they study the ocean and how a hotel could be underwater. Contrasting this to the second video is a very different outlook on technology. This video shows the harmful effects of technology and how it is ruining everyone’s life. It shows how depressed people get and how all people are ‘glued” to their phones with no personal interaction. It shows how people are fake on social media, creating a hierarchy. It shows how technology makes people very lonely because it is like everyone lives in their bubble due to technology. Both of these videos are accurate, and both have truth in them. To me, the world is a balance of both. Technology has pushed the world to learn new things and have a lot more opportunities, but with all good things must come bad things, and we saw this on the wrong side of the Technology video.