Final Blog Post

My relationship with technology is one that, for better or for worse, I have accepted with open arms. From even before the time when I got my first phone I have always had an interest in technology, specifically consumer technology. Anything from the iPhone 4s to the OnePlus 9 Pro 5G, I have always had an interest in it. The minute I had access to the internet I learned everything I could about technology and computers and I loved keeping up with the latest releases and the latest updates, whether they be hardware for software. Now, with that being said, I have always been in support of technology and all it can do for people and the positive impact it has had. One of those positive impacts being ease of access to information. With the advancements in personal computers and laptops and even phones, it has been easier than ever to get the information you need with just a couple taps or clicks. But, does all that innovation come with any drawbacks? The short answer is yes, many of them. The long answer is that even though these devices have done so much good for us, they have also done a good amount of harm. If you just look at the amount time technology, specifically our phones, are used in a day, you start to realize that we don't rely on technology, technology relies on us. Apple released in iOS 12 in 2018 this new feature that all iPhones would get called screen time. What this feature does is track your phone usage and gives you a weekly report on your phone usage and what apps you frequent, what apps you tend to use after you pick up your phone and even how many notifications you get in a day. If we use my screen time statistics from last week as an example, I averaged about 7 hours and 15 minutes on my phone per day. For anyone who doesn't want to do the math, Apple has you covered because they also calculate your total screen time for the week. If we use my data as an example again, those 7 hours and 15 minutes per day adds up to 50 hours and 46 minutes FOR THE ENTIRE WEEK! You can also make an argument for the addictability of technology, specifically smartphones. As mentioned before, your phone can also track how many times you pick it up. Using my screen time data again on average I picked up my phone 146 times per day, which adds up to 1,022 times for the entire week. Even while writing this blog post i've looked at my phone probably 10 times already. 

Now as for the upsides to technology, as I mentioned before the ease of access to information is astonishing. With search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and even YouTube among many others, you can access just about any website that is in existence. This is revolutionary for so many fields, whether your a scientist trying to cure cancer and you need to look at the latest journal entries that have come out or if you're a student trying to write their final blog post for their class, you can find information quickly and efficiently. Back in the 1960's, the thought of consumer technology and the idea of being able to look at a screen for mostly reputable information wasn't even a thought to most people. However, some people did dream of a futuristic society where we would live underwater in underwater hotels and we would have these massive rovers on the moon, which they weren't too far off with, to automated trucks using massive highways to deliver goods to cities around the country. This was all the imagination of one famous exhibit at the World's Fair in New York back in 1964, called FUTURAMA. However, if they could see us now, with flatscreen televisions that work more like computers and cordless telephones that work more like computers and computers that worked more like smartphones, they would be dumbfounded and astonished. They'd be amazed that kids these days barely even pick up books anymore and have an iPad in their hand by the age of three. 

However, with how mazing the physical and information gathering aspect of technology is, it also is doing us a good amount of harm, more specifically social media is. The concept of social media is amazing, you get to communicate with friends and family who are long distance or just at their house around the block. You get to share ideas with them and information or even just share a joke once and a while. However, social media has become way more than that. Besides social media being a massive way to market useless products and information to people, which I won't get into now, social media has become this playground of FOMO (fear of missing out) and mental health problems and emotionless engagement. Social media is a drug you don't even know you're taking and when that drug gets a hold of your life it holds on tight. I know that personally whenever I post a picture to Instagram, I love seeing all the notifications come in of all the likes I get, and I love seeing the number of likes grow too. I actually sometimes set arbitrary goals for the like count, I tell myself things like "oh lets see if I can reach 100 likes" or something stupid like that. The reason why I call that an arbitrary goal is because I set it for myself but I do absolutely nothing to influence the outcome, I just hope that the next 5 or 10 friends the come across the post like it and push me over that "goal" number. The impacts of social media doesn't stop at the pointless goals I set for myself. Sonia Bokhari wrote a article for Fast Company about how when she was 12 or 13 she joined Facebook and Twitter and realized that even though she hadn't been on social media, her face and image had been for years. Her mom was posting pictures that Bokhari found very embarrassing on Facebook for years without her even knowing. Furthermore, her sister had also been taking thing that she thought were funny things Bokhari said and was posting them to Twitter without Bokhari even knowing. But that also wasn't the only thing that happened that day, she also started to create her digital footprint. If you don't know what a digital footprint is it is basically your presence online. It is what outsiders can discover and know you by. An example of that is, especially nowadays, when you apply for a job employers will search up your name and see what they can dig up on you, sometimes even hiring outside companies to do it better than they would. They'll find all of your social media profiles and anything that has ever been said about you online and make a decision if they way you live your life outside of work is in like with the company values. If you Google your name, you'll see just how big or how small your digital footprint is and you can start being more cautious about what you post or you will be able to know exactly how it will be found and how it may affect the decisions of others. 

In conclusion, I love technology. It has been a big part of my teens and early adulthood. However, technology has its drawbacks. From the idea that your phone controls you instead of you controlling it to the idea that social media is a wasteland of every bad idea humans have come up with. Does technology have its upsides, yes. Technology makes it easier to find possibly critical information fast and with ease. Technology is also perfect for entertainment with the creation of YouTube back in 2005 to all of the streaming services available, which are now well over 200. Technology can be a vital aspect of everyday life for humans. It can make our quality of life better too and allow us to do even simple tasks with ease. However, that can only be achievable if we get control on technology and the way it is quickly consuming our lives. We need to remember that technology is a tool and it needs to be treated as such, not just an extension of our life.