Featured Image: Animated Heaven, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
My experience with technology has been a love/hate relationship for a long time.
Technology can be a burden at times through the way we utilize it. Growing up, Instagram became popular beginning of middle school. An already awkward, hard time just became even harder.
Comparing myself vs those on my phone screen became a constant habit. It can be damaging to see photos of people who appear happier than you with lives better than you and still remain content with your own life.
It became too much of a habit to mindlessly go on my phone and go on Instagram. I would scroll for hours even though it didn’t bring me any joy. Once I could recognize that I was wasting too much of my time staring a screen, looking into the filtered lives of others, I wanted to fix it.
Trying to break a habit, I set a timer on my phone for the app with a passcode my friend set that I do not know. Since then, I have been much more conscious of my time spent on my screen which has improved my life greatly. Technology can be great, but there is a lot of potential to go down a dark hole that consumes more of our time than it ever should. With that being said, there is love and appreciation I have for technology for helping me many times.
I have very little directional awareness and the thought of not being able to use GoogleMaps to figure out in two seconds where I am going sounds horrifying.
I appreciate technology to keep me closer to loved ones. Having my dad in Arizona, my mom in California, and my partner in the military all around the world, it helps keep me close to all.
As a future educator, I am relieved I have technology to assist me to be the best teacher I can be. If a student has a question I am not sure about, I have the power of Google to help me answer. Lesson ideas, videos to show real-life examples, calculators, and many other helpful tools.
For my future, I plan to balance how I use technology to utilize it to my benefit but not let it be time and emotionally-draining.
Hi Jenna! Thank you for sharing about your personal relationship with technology. It was so relatable when you wrote, “It became too much of a habit to mindlessly go on my phone and go on Instagram. I would scroll for hours even though it didn’t bring me any joy.” This hits home and this realization is one of the reasons why I am actively trying to limit my screen time on my phone. I do not want scrolling on social media to be one of my hobbies! Great job writing this!
Jenna,
An thoughtful reflection on your tech life- many insights and astute observations. I especially this one:
“Growing up, Instagram became popular beginning of middle school. An already awkward, hard time just became even harder.” … Didn’t know if I wanted to laugh or cry.
Great idea to put a timer on your phone and intrust the code to a friend. I need to suggest that to a few people I know. The challenge for all of us is that social media business model is built on engagement. So they employ experts to come up with gimmicks to keep us locked in. So you’ll need to fight hard to win your attention back.
Hi Jenna!
I found it so interesting and helpful to hear about how you limit your screen time by setting a timer on your phone with a passcode that your friend creates so that it prevents you from going on it while trying to be productive. This is definitely something that I would like to try myself because when I have too much free time I tend to just stay on my phone rather than doing other activities.