FINAL BLOG PROMPT

My Relationship With Technology

Everyone all over the world has some type of relationship with technology. Whether that relationship is good, bad, healthy, or unhealthy is vary's case by case and from person to person. I know for example that I don't have the same relationship with Google that I do Facebook. Nor do I have the same relationship with Snapchat that I do Instagram. I don't even have the same relationship with my phone that I do with my laptop. 

Personally, I think that my relationship with technology is overall fairly healthy. I am not someone who likes to post a lot on social media. Actually, I sometimes forget to take a photo of me hanging out with a friend if we go somewhere different like shopping or to an amusement park. And even if I take the photo I sometimes forget to post it. Then there are times where I take photos of something I did or somewhere I went which was different for me and I forgot to post it. To me, if you have a photo and it has already been a day or two since the event there is no point posting about it since the moment has already passed. Even though I do post stuff I don't do it often. Actually, for a very long time, I refused to post anything or have a picture of me posted anywhere on social media. I also refused to use any nicknames or even put down my real name when signing up for different accounts or for my social media. It wasn't until a few years ago I gave my mom my permission to post the minimum amount of pictures of me on her Facebook, (for example me at my graduation, vacation, etc.). My mom who is an avid Facebook lovers and posts stuff like us on vacation or reposts stuff from her friends she finds cute or interesting uses social media more often than me and has more posts about or directed towards me than I do on all my social media accounts. 

My mom loves Facebook. She uses it for everything from getting her news to hearing about what is going on in her friend's lives. You could even say she is addicted to Facebook since she is on it all the time even when there is work around the house to be done. Or she has to do work for her job.  Whenever we are all in the family room she will sometimes say something like "Oh come on" or will even sometimes just burst out laughing. It freaks everyone else in my family out and when we ask her what caused her to have that reaction she will say "oh it something on Facebook, you have to look at this". We are always not interested in it and say that we are okay not looking at what she was looking at but she would insist so we would look at it and 9/10 times it was something stupid that wasn't worth the two seconds it took to look at it. My mom also used to beg me to get a Facebook so that she could share stuff with me. It was only during my senior year of high school that I made an account. The reason I made an account was so that I could follow my class's Facebook page. After I got my Facebook account I decided that it was only going to be used for news and to keep up with my friends, which is exactly what I use it for if I use it at all, normally I don't even go on Facebook that often maybe once every month for like five minutes. Even when my mom shares stuff on Facebook with me almost daily I don't really actually look at what she shares. 

The relationship I have with Facebook actively sums up my relationship with most of the social media platforms I have. I tend to only look at Instagram maybe once every two weeks but even then I have gone almost three months before I actually look at my Instagram. Even then I am only on my Instagram for at most fifteen minutes but usually, I only am on it for two minutes. I don't even look at my Snapchat that often. My friends who want to start a streak with me always complain that they sent me a Snapchat and I didn't see it. I even have the notifications turned on and I still ignore them. I also someone who doesn't understand how people can post an image of just their shoes or of themselves to their story and not feel silly or awkward about it. I would have no idea how to tag that type of photo. It always makes me uncomfortable to respond to my friend's Snapchat's they sent to me since I never know what to take a photo of since normally I am not doing anything I find important or interesting enough to take a picture of. Even then I just feel so awkward and clumsy taking a photo of myself and sending it to them. Looking at my friend's photos it sometimes feels like they just see the world through filters and how to get the best lighting and angle for a photo, like how some people can do math in their head, it feels like they can do "What can I take post about and how to take the best photo ever" calculations in their head almost instantly. I did once try to be more proactive on my Snapchat since I always feel obligated to respond to one of my friends if they send something to me, but I just gave up after a while. The only social media accounts that I actively use are probably Pinterest, Tumblr, and Deviantart. I use Pinterest mainly to look up ideas on crafts or how to organize something, sometimes to even come up with gift ideas for my relatives. Tumblr and Deviantart I look at when I am bored and mostly for the artwork people display there. I love to see how good people are at drawing and how lifelike some of those drawings are. 

However, while I think I have a fairly healthy relationship with social media. It has its downsides. Social media can push certain looks forward, and make people feel bad about themselves for a variety of reasons. It can also make people forget to just live in the moment, therefore isolating them. It can also change your perception of different events and influence your opinion on things. You can even get a social media addiction which while it sounds ridiculous can be threatening to your health. It can even change the way your brain works.

However, I have to say I mostly use my phone to read books, which for me isn't any unhealthier than carrying around and reading physical books. It is probably the healthiest activity you could use your phone for since reading helps expand the mind, make you think, and help keep your imagination alive. The amount of information that I have picked up and used in my daily life or to impress my parents is outstanding. I also use it to listen to music or educational videos. Which again isn't that unhealthy. Overall I would say I give technology an appropriate amount of my time. I would also say it does make me more intelligent since I use it to learn new things about the world around me and to broaden my horizons. Technology can be misleading but for me personally, it is all about fact-checking and deciding if something sounds realistic or not and even then I always try to use credible sources so that I don't get fed false information. I never take my news from places like Facebook unless I was looking at a post that was done by the New York Times, BBC, or other credible news sources. If there is one thing I absolutely hate it is being misled or lied to. I also hate gossip and drama and find it to be headache-inducing. Since it is all so predictable and so stupid since most of those situations are normally false, or turn out to be nothing that someone made into something. Even worse is that most of those situations could have been fixed with a bit of logic and common sense. I do find it worrying how gullible and stupid people are once they get on the internet. It is like none of them learned the age-old lesson of "not everything you hear or see on the internet is true" even the "don't judge a book by its cover" applies to the internet and it seems like people think everything is true or that if they post horrible things it won't ever get back to them.

Honestly, some of the cyberbullies out there use the internet because of its anonymity. If you were to tell those people that they are going to have to read the horrible things they posted on the internet to that person's face they wouldn't be able to do it. Why because they then would have to face up to the facts that they can be identified and that there are real-world consequences. The statistics say you are more likely to be bullied online than in person. According to pacer.org "A higher percentage of male than of female students report being physically bullied (6% vs. 4%), whereas a higher percentage of female than of male students reported being the subjects of rumors (18% vs. 9%)." On top of that, the teen suicide rate has increased due to cyberbullying. Cyberbullying has apparently gotten to the point where you can get insurance because of it.

I am very protective of my own identity and information on the web. It took me years to put my first name in the description box and make my profile picture a photo of myself on Instagram. I did it so that when I requested to follow the people I went to school with or who are my friends, they won't be like who is this person who is trying to follow me. Even then I have to admit that my profile picture for all of my social media accounts is either blank or a photo of a place like a beach. Only a select few have a picture of me. Even then I try to obscure myself as much as possible if I can. For example, the profile picture I use for my Instagram account is a photo that was taken at a distance on a day trip with two of my other friends in the picture. The reason I chose that was that you have to zoom in or enlarge the picture to actually see everyone's features in distinct detail. Nobody can track me down using the photo's location since I don't live anywhere near where the photo was taken. And the final nail on the coffin is that unless you know me personally you are going to have no idea which of the three people is me in the photo. I have always felt very uncomfortable having my information out there so I try my best to not let it happen. I set all my accounts to private, give the bare minimum of information that I have to, almost always use a nickname or a fake name, always turn my location off, make sure that only those I want to see my social media can see it, and make sure my profile picture if there is any, doesn't give much away about who I am. I can even admit that sometimes I will lie about my birthday because I don't want some social media company to know my information. I have always been very aware of the dangers of the world, especially social media. I guess it helps to have parents who would shelter me from the world and a mother whose favorite saying that she lived by and rubbed off on us is "better safe than sorry". Seriously, in college, I ended up being the only one of my friends who had a fully stocked large first aid kit, and other products for when you are hurt or sick like a mini vaporizer, heating pad, hot water bottle, cold medicine, cough drops, and portable tissues. I am also the only one who seemed to ever have glue, tape, colored pencils, and a hole punch. All of which my friends would always either ask to borrow or say "I wish I had that". I have always been raised to be cautious and responsible which helps when it comes to the internet. However, I think the two factors that help make me so cautious and responsible especially on the internet are fear and anxiety. As a child, I would get scared over everything especially things on tv. It made finding something to watch as a family difficult since we never knew what might set me off. I distinctly remember when I was much younger and still had a bedtime I had woken up and was thirsty and knew my parents were awake so I went downstairs and they were watching something and my dad had to pause it because I had gotten freaked out by it. The ironic thing is that the show they were watching, Stargate SG1, would wind up being one of my favorite shows when I was older. I especially despised the news since it was always negative and would talk about some murder that occurred or something. However, I think the thing that really showed me all the dangers the world had to offer and made me so cautious were all those criminal investigations shows my sister would binge watch that I had to watch with her. Since, while they were fake they could happen in theory. I also had a lot of help with identifying if a site was safe or not since I was not allowed to look at let alone get an account to any site without my parent's approval for a long time. Though now that I am older I no longer have to do this as my parents trust my judgment. As such I have so far not had any problems with my accounts or being harassed on social media. I also know that I am quite fortunate that I don't leave much digital footprint for others to pick up on. Since I don't really actively use social media and when I do I am as anonymous as possible. It also helps that if you were to google me you would find everyone else but me. Seriously, I happen to be very good at finding the information that I want and no matter how long I looked or how I worded it. I couldn't find myself. It helps to have such a common last name seriously during my public school years in my grade year alone there were two other people with the last name Jones. I also have a common enough first name that it makes it almost impossible when you put these two factors together to find me. I even tried finding myself using my email or phone number on a website specializing in this stuff and found nothing. I also can take comfort in that none of the things I post are damaging or embarrassing and I know that if my future employer could look at my profile it shows nothing that would hurt my chances.

I am really concerned about things like hacking, identity theft, and my privacy being violated. According to identityforce.com "there’s a new victim of identity theft every 2 seconds" that is absolutely insane. Seriously according to identityforce.com "In 2019, 14.4 million consumers became victims of identity fraud — that’s about 1 in 15 people." And to make those statistics even more concerning according to identityforce.com "Overall, 33 percent of U.S. adults have experienced identity theft, which is more than twice the global average." Identity theft has a lasting and damaging impact on its victims. According to georgia.gov "Victims of identity theft will feel overwhelmed at times by the psychological pain of loss, helplessness, anger, isolation, betrayal, rage, and even embarrassment.  This crime triggers deep fears regarding financial security, the safety of family members, and the ability to trust again." And to make matters worse there isn't much protection against identity theft. Laws vary from state to state. Hacking and identity theft are getting more and more common. It is not just about worrying about you getting hacked personally anymore. But now you have to worry about all the companies such as stores, social media platforms, etc. that have your personal information getting hacked and having your information stolen. I mean it has happened to Facebook several times already. Where I live it was big news when the colonial pipeline was hacked it caused people to panic, gas prices to rise, and gas stations to run out of gas. It is scary how a big corporation which you would think has very good cybersecurity could get hacked. So, is your relationship with technology healthy? Are you safe on the internet? What is your digital footprint?