My Relationship with Technology

     

Now more than ever I am using online media every day whether it is for getting my news, doing my assigned work for classes, checking social media and so much more. I would say that my online footprint is pretty large, considering that I am always going on websites whether it's on my phone or computer to watch videos/movies or do work for school. I would say for myself that overall my relationship with technology for the most part is healthy, however it is nowhere near being 100% healthy. In my opinion, I believe that technology is taking up too much time in my life and I feel that I should limit my time that I use it. I think that technology informs us and makes us smarter more than it does misleading/giving us unreliable information. Even though most of the information given out online is credible and true, you have to watch for information that is unreliable and false which is given out more times than you think. This is why I believe that it is very important for people to be educated on being able to tell what is real and fake news because it helps you become smarter as a person when you are able to receive news that is real as well as be able to tell when news is false/unreliable. I occasionally worry about whether the news that I am receiving is real or not because founding out that you have been lied to about something that you thought was true is never a good feeling to experience. For my friends and family, I would say that technology is mostly a positive part of their lives because they pretty much only use it to receive their news.

    Before the Covid-19 pandemic, I would say that for me technology only played a minor role of importance in my relationships because I would prefer to hang out and talk with people face to face instead of over the phone. However, during these uncertain times the impact of technology on my relationships have definitely grown due to not being able to see or talk with friends or certain family members. To my knowledge, I do not have a personal website about myself, however, after doing some searching on the internet I found websites that were titled with my name but none of those sites were about me they were instead about other people named Jack Neary. The social media sites that I use the most often are instagram, snapchat, twitter and linkedin. I really do not post that much on social media accounts mainly because I mostly just have them as a source of news. If I decide to post something on my social media accounts, I never post about anything personal whether it’s about me or friends/family instead, I usually post about sports or a fun trip that I recently went on. The main reason why I do this is because I do not want a stranger who I do not know at all to have any personal information about my family, friends or me as well as I try to be very careful with what content I post so that way it does not come could hurt me down the road. After researching me personally, information that you could find out about me on social media is where I go to school currently and the year I’m planning on graduating which is 2024 as well as that I play soccer. The only private information that I have given out in the past is my email address as well as my phone number. However, just recently I started to not give my actual phone number as well as email address when signing up for certain things and going different places. I believe that social media can make you feel depressed, isolated and lonely because most people spend way too much time caring what people online who they do not even know how to say about them instead of their friends and family who know exactly what kind of good person they are. Since a majority of Americans who use social media are already self conscious about themselves it does not help them when they are being cyber bullied by someone online via social media.