Final Presentation

 My Relationship with Technology:

The role social media has in my life is to stay connected to people and to enjoy seeing others enjoy life as well. Social media helps me tell other people what I am up to and what is happening in my life. The role of social media also helps me stay sane through the bad times in my life. What I mean by that is I look at funny videos or dog videos and it brings me joy when life isn’t fair to me. Social media isn’t my entire life, it’s only a small part so that I can stay connected with friends and family. Although I go on it every single day, I don’t let it consume my life. I also don’t let myself compare my life to other people’s life. In our generation, Gen Z, might be the last generation to know what life was like before all this new technology consumed us all.

When I was about in elementary school, I was exposed to many different flip phones and burner phones. I got my first burner phone when I was about 10 years old because I begged my parents to get me a phone because all my other friends had some sort of phone. Since then, I’ve gotten IPhones so that I’m able to text and call and not have a limit to how much interaction I have with my friends. Since then, technology has grown and evolved. Social media has become a part of our lives. My relationship with social media has had its ups and downs but overall I think it’s been positive for me to continue to have social media. I personally use Instagram, SnapChat, YouTube, and TikTok.

The only online presence I have that needs editing is the amount of time I spend on social media. I go on social media whenever I am bored, if I want to avoid something, or I go on social media to distract myself from making hard decisions I have to make in my life. I could spend hours looking at dog videos on Instagram and TikTok. I watch a lot of stupid videos, they give me joy when I am not feeling the best mentally. Even though I look at a lot of useless stuff, I find informational videos on TikTok about what’s happening around the world and what laws have been passed in our country. In the news, we don’t really hear about what’s happening in different countries and it’s sad that I have to go find out what’s happening through an app or looking it up myself. I realized at a young age that I have to be cautious of what I post online because it will stay online forever, even if you delete it, it’s always going to be there.

I believe that everything can have its downsides and there’s always a loophole in any system. The more social media you go on, the more problems you might face in the future. Although there are many downsides to having social media, there are so many positives to using social media. The positives of having social media is that you can stay in touch with people from a far and still know what they’re up to, or that you can enjoy a skit someone made and laugh at it. Some downsides to having social media is that you can compare yourself to other people and that can lead to having self-conscious thoughts about your own body. Another downside is that you could self isolate yourself from the world because you don’t think anyone cares about you, but in reality people do care. Being a person who goes online every single day can be draining, and might need to take breaks from any social media.

For me, it can be hard to balance social media, but I take action for my mental health. I take a lot of breaks from social media every day because I don’t want the media consuming my entire life. I personally turn off my phone for long periods of time, I leave my phone in my room, and I try to distract myself by doing things I love. I believe that having balance in your life is important and in order to have balance you must do things you're passionate about. Technology is always going to be in our lives whether we like it or not, we just have to find balance within ourselves to make sure technology doesn’t consume us.