FINAL BLOG POST

Growing up, I was taught to build healthy relationships with my family and friends, but since advancing technologies, the relationships I made with people have been significantly impacted by technology. My relationship with technology has affected the way I live my life, in negative and positive ways. Technology has been a big part in my life since I was a kid.  When my parents were my age, they didn’t have access to advance technology and their way of life was much different than how mine is today. Modern technology such has cellphones and tablets had made it easier to communicate, but ironically, has allowed people to have an option to ignore those who are closest to them. Technology has become one of our main sources of communication whether it’s through text, call, video chat and has made our lives more convenient, but is it for our better good?

 A question that I always ask myself is that I wonder what life would be like if I didn’t always have my cellphone on me, or if I didn’t have my computer to help me complete certain tasks. Without this technology, the simplest tasks would be much more difficult. It has helped us with work, communicating with our close ones and has been a huge impact on the COVID-19 pandemic when we were all in a lockdown. Instead of going to the movie theater, we have access to those movies on the internet or instead of going to the mall, we have the option to browse through stores online. We can’t predict what technology will continue to do in our futures, but many changes are expected to come has it keeps evolving.

Technology has made humans individually smarter and individually dumber; but more collectively smarter. Technology allows us to be able to do more, while understanding less about what we are doing and becoming more dependent on others. The world-wide web has an abundance of information that we rely on and take the knowledge that we have from. 

 After reading an article about a 14-year old who quit technology, it makes me question if it was necessary for me to have access to social media at a young age. “Teens get a lot of warnings that we aren’t mature enough to understand that everything we post online is permanent”.

Parents don't realize that if they post their children on social media it could potentially impact their lives as they become young adults. Our digital footprint could be impacted from not only what you post on social media, but what someone else posts on the internet. A digital footprint is "a trail of 'electronic bread crumbs' you leave behind when you use the internet." When posting your information on the internet, it can lead to many risks which is a reason that technology can be unhealthy and toxic to someones well being. It can lead to bullying, blackmail and can harm one's reputation depending what is posted on the internet. Technology can lead to losing reality of the real world and can harm our mental health drastically.  Currently, my digital footprint is my LinkedIn, Instagram and other social media I have thats under my name. Searching my name also results in information about my family members and people who have the same name as me.