Final Post

                                                       Technology- is it Healthy?

Technology has been around for many years and has progressively gotten better, quicker, and more reliable. We are surrounded by it from all corners. We use technology every second of our day, whether it be for school, business, or personal use. We are constantly utilizing it. With anything, there are pros and cons to technology. Such as for pros, we are being able to communicate with others very easily, stay on top of the most recent social media updates, and can voice our opinions and ideas. While on the other hand, it can be very addictive and can certainly create lots of distractions for us.  It has clearly made our human lives easier and we have become completely dependent on it. 

My Relationship

My relationship with technology has tremendously helped me as I have gotten older. Thinking about it, I do not know what I would do without it. I am constantly on it as a source of communication with friends and family. In addition, I rely on it heavily with my school work such as for sources and general information. It truly started once I got my first iPhone in middle school, moving forward I have drawn more attention and have been grateful to have it. I believe my relationship is healthy because I balance social media and my own life. I make sure that I am not overly addicted to it and live in the moment.  Having a healthy relationship with social media/technology, allows people to control their emotional health and well-being. There are many ways to limit your phone use, such as turning off your phone while you are doing something. This will allow you to focus on more important things and complete tasks that need to be done. Also, we have an option on our phones where we can set our time limits on apps which can restrict select how many hours you can be on a certain app. This is extremely helpful because it sets boundaries for yourself. 

However, we come to an understanding that social media is this great thing, however, it was not always great for me when I was younger. There were some downfalls that come with technology and social media. For example, since I constantly gravitate to social media as it is my main source of communication, there are lots of negative effects to it such as comparing yourself to others. Looking at people's appearance and comparing yourself to them is an extremely difficult thing to try to forget about. I let it not affect me as I have become older and more mature but in my youth it was hard. According to JED education, "Although perhaps unconnected, it is worth noting that concerning mental health trends (e.g. depression, anxiety, body image issues), in youth worsened during the same period of time that teen smartphone and social media use increased." This is very accurate because once my friends and I got their phones, shortly after social comparison began. I felt judged which made my self-esteem decrease from seeing other people my age look and act better than me. I even felt my self-esteem lower with girls especially those who were the same age as me. If they happened to even look or dress slightly better than me, I felt defeated. This is a huge problem that will unfortunately still be around from time to time. However, I realized that this doesn't define me and is just something that you must go through when you are young. 

Balancing your mental health with social media is very hard because although technology is very positive at times, it can be very degrading to our life. It is scary to say that the platform is designed at times to put people's anxiety and depression at risk. While I was researching social media to write this, there were so many ideas that I found to balance your mental health with social media. One of the ways that stuck out to me was finding a purpose for being on social media. Whether it be searching someone up or wishing someone a Happy Birthday. Find that purpose and log off after you complete that mission or at least try to. Therefore, this will help to not fall into the rabbit hole of scrolling for hours upon hours with no purpose. 

Online Footprint is also a crucial thing to technology. It is the data you leave when using the internet. Whether it be, shopping online, leaving a review on a website, or as simple as posting something on social media. Within seconds it is traced or even worse your personal data can be spread as well. So, it is very important to keep track of what you put out there because it truly never "goes away". This has especially been a problem recently because of how many people overshare on the internet. Ever since I have been exposed to the internet, my parents always told me about this problem and that I must be aware. From now on, whatever I search for I know how quickly my information can be collected. It is a privacy issue and will stay there once it is kept online. It is hard to not share your personal information with the world but it will save you in the long run. 

According to Fast Company, learning about what you put online is crucial to your identity. 

Sonia Bokhari, who is an 8th grader joined social media and discovered that her mom and sister posted about her life. She began to find that her family posted embarrassing photos and memories about her. She confronted her sister and said, " Don't do this anymore without my permission." Once they had stopped, she made her account private and made sure she had controlled herself on all social media platforms. She also made sure that nothing she put out there had her location since that is a huge issue in today's world with stalkers. Since she opted out of social media, she felt more secure about her life and information.

This all ties into the fact that maybe taking a break or even quitting social media will help people's mental health and enables them to become less stressed and distracted. Although many people will not do so, it benefits the majority.

On the other hand, while people try to not become too attached to the internet, they don't want to miss out on anything. FOMO (fear of missing out) is in a huge effect today when people are worried they will miss out on anything social media related. Whether it be news on something or even celebrity drama. This is why people frantically check their phones constantly so that this doesn't happen to them. The anxiety that's caused by potentially missing out on something causes frustration to others. This even happens to me, if my friends are talking about drama on social media and I have not heard or seen it yet, I get frustrated because I can't engage in the conversation. It is crazy to wrap your head around it because since we are on our phones constantly, it is pretty challenging not to miss anything. However, it is also important to have a balance with the internet in order to have a healthier life. 

Below, this stat shows all these percentages of how many people cannot live without their phones. Some feel "uneasy" about accidentally leaving their phones at home. It also says Americans check their phones 344 times a day. Which, if you just think about all those times of picking up your phone instead of doing something more important in your life, shows that we are all so addicted. 

The short video "Mad Crazy World" shows how extremely addicted we are to our phones. It is becoming a worldwide issue and looking back at the video, it is pretty disturbing that most of us don't face reality and live in the moment rather than being on our phones 24/7. We have all been there, myself included where we are engrossed in our phones whether it be watching something or as simple as scrolling on TikTok. This is something that our society cannot fix, unfortunately, this is the type of thing that will just get worse. This affects our mental health (anxiety, depression, etc...) Thinking back to 2020, when we only had social media and the internet as our source of entertainment due to COVID-19. I believe ever since this epidemic, addictions have been even worse because that's all we had. We became very bored and isolated during these sad times and as a coping mechanism, we used the internet as an escape from what was going on in our world. 

Finally, I am very grateful to have the internet and social media as an outlet for me. Although there are some negative aspects that come along with it, it is a vital part of our lives. We can all agree that technology has made us more intelligent and advanced. In addition, I have learned a lot in this course and have a better understanding when it comes to technology and the dangers that arise.