My Relationship with Technology

    Technology has played a huge role in my life. Growing up in a generation where I feel like technology grew with us, I do remember a time without technology, but it didn't take long for it to take over my life. My parents gave my sister and I a flip phone at a very young age just to call in case of emergencies. Later we received knock off blackberry styled phones also mainly just to call. By the 5th grade I had my first iPhone and although many of my peers didn't Facebook had just hit the seen and we were all trying to make accounts. In 6th grade at the age of 12 I remember hearing about Instagram and Snapchat and without telling my parents anything I made myself accounts. This is when I feel like I became addicted to social media. 

    My relationship with social media/technology in general isn't healthy and I am well aware that I spend way too much time on my phone. Just this past week my screen time average per day is 6 1/2 hours and this is low. I know during the pandemic my screen time on a daily basis was averaging anywhere from 8-12 hours a day. This is bad and yet not as bad as some other people I know. My addiction to social media hasn't impacted me in terms of being afraid to talk in public, over the phone, or having social anxiety in general which are many problems kids my age face today. It is so easy to seclude yourself nowadays where you can order things online and get them delivered straight to your door. All these factors impact how we communicate with other today. 

    With anything comes their pros and cons. Technology and social media have done so many great things. It makes it so much easier to stay in-touch with people even if they move far away. My parents were able to find so many of their childhood friends after getting social media. My mom's host family from when she lived in Spain during high school was able to contact her and they were able to reunite after year of not talking. We can quickly send messages and get information from google faster than ever before. Technology has even helped those with disabilities making day to day activities a little bit easier for them to overcome. The cons with technology and social media are the impact on mental health and body image issue. More than every before teens feel an immense amount of pressure to post all this high-quality content. Personally, I believe I used to struggle with this more when I was younger and impressionable than I do today. Now I realize Instagram is one huge highlight reel, nobody is going to post the bad moments only the good ones. You shouldn't envy or be jealous of anyone else because we all have our bad day and moments, we just don't show it. Plus, that super model or celebrity picture you're looking at has most likely been edited and we cannot expect ourselves to look like them. 

    Although AI is taking over, and online privacy today is hard to maintain I think I have done a very good job at it. My "digital footprint" doesn't reveal too much on my laptop as it does my phone. On my laptop I never really search up things that aren't school related and videos I watch on YouTube typically aren't viewed by people like me. I know this because the ads on my laptop are never products I would buy and constantly instead of ads I get surveys asking my age group or gender which I always just skip. Another thing I think helps a lot is I never buy anything online not for privacy reasons just because I prefer to go in person and try on clothes or buy items in person, so I know exactly what I am getting. I also feel very good about my online presence. Looking through all my social medias I do not feel like I revival took much about myself but enough that you can tell I'm a real person and you can understand a bit of my personality. 

    We cannot stop the rapid pack or growing technology like AI and social media, but we can prepare ourselves to try to protect our own privacy as much as possible. We know that we are being tracked with our every-move and people that have spoken out about this have been censored. Online censorship needs to be fought because it goes against our rights and everything we believe as the American people. We need to be more aware that everything we search becomes data. When you use your phone, laptop, or social media be cautious. Every so often clearing you search history helps even making fake google accounts are some steps you can take to protect yourself and your privacy.