Technology has an affect on everyone in today's world. Whether that impact is healthy or unhealthy, we can mostly say that all types of technology have helped us in some way. Everywhere we go, there is technology around us. The amount that one consumes can be a negative, unless they are using it as a benefit.
As shown in the video, technology was hoped to be our "savior." I do not think that technology has saved us by any means, if anything, it has hurt the world. Cyberbullying happens all the time, attention-spans are being lowered each day, fake news has a large opportunity to be spread around, cancel culture exits. There are many downsides to technology.
My relationship with technology began when I was 11-years-old. I received my first iPad, I can confidently say my life has changed ever since that moment. There was no more passion and going to the backyard to play football, coloring different drawings with my sister, and the wish to play board games with my family. Once I received the iPad, I was introduced to a whole new world that I was not used to before it.
Since then, technology has been with me everyday. From running home from middle school to play games or watch YouTube on my iPad, or leaving my college class to hop on a video game with my friends all around the country, it is always beside me. Looking back at it, I wish I cherished the moments without technology a little bit more as I now realize I am, "warped" in the world of technology and it most likely will never leave me until the day I die. Life was simpler without it.
As I am writing this, I feel that my relationship with technology is healthy. I use it too connect with friends and family hundreds of miles away from me, use it for homework (wouldn't be writing this without it), and I use it as an escape from the real world.
In the past few years, I have realized what type of power that technology gives me. In my sophomore year of high school, I created an Instagram page about NASCAR to share my passion with others, as nobody in my high school was a fan of the sport. This gave me the opportunity to meet new people who shared the same passion as me. Since then, my page has reached over 53,000 followers, and in the last 90 days alone, over 10 million people have viewed my thoughts and content that I share online. I can't even put a picture in my head of how many people have seen something that I have posted online, I have the opportunity to influence many other's thoughts just by clicking a button online.
In fact, technology is the entire reason I am in this class at High Point University. This college offers a degree in Social Media and Digital Communications. My goal when deciding my college choice was to find a school in North Carolina to put me closer to the heart of NASCAR, and find one where I could learn about social media hoping to be a PR rep or journalist in NASCAR when I graduate. If I did not use technology to create my social media page, who knows where I would be right now.
With that, I feel that I have to appreciate technology in some way, however, there are lots of unhealthy traits that I have with technology, such as the amount of time I spend on it. My daily average this week spent on my phone is 2 hours and 43 minutes, thanks to it being finals week. That number is down 71% from last week. I do not do anything to prevent myself from leaning to technology, I fall asleep right next to my phone and when I wake up, it is in my pocket within minutes and will be there all throughout my day. The first thing I do in the morning is check my phone, once I finished checking my phone, I get out of bed. Those are awful habits that I can attempt to fix if I were to wish to escape from technology constantly being around me.
I can't answer the question, "Do you think you are giving technology the appropriate amount of time in your life?" I do not know what the appropriate amount of time would be. It is hard to imagine what technology is useful and what is not. Some of the time I spend on technology is for the better, such as
connecting with my family and friends, and the countless hours of video games is for the worse. Or is it? While playing games, I am talking to my hometown friends who I do not get to see everyday. Would that make it "okay?"
My online footprint is interesting to think about. My mom taught me, "Don't post anything on social media that you would not want Mimi to see." I can confidently say that I have always followed that rule. When it comes to my online footprint, there are multiple ways one knows and sees me. My friends from home see my posts and view them as a friend would, then there are the people who follow me from my NASCAR page who see me as the journalist who provides them NASCAR news. I have always had a public account, therefore there are people who I have never spoken one word to in my life who follow me. With this, I need to be careful of what I share online. If an employer were to Google me, they would find photos from my Instagram page which 90% of them are me at a racetrack. I do not upload any photos that have to do with partying, that could create a bad image.
I can't imagine my families relationship with technology being much different. My parents always have their phones with them and they use social media actively. My parents do not post much on social media, at least not to the extent that my sister and I do. The only difference I can think of would be the amount of time they spend on their phones. My parents do not scroll through TikTok for multiple hours in the day like I do. However, their lives are still influenced with technology everyday.
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