My Relationship With Technology

 My relationship with technology is not as healthy as I would like it to be. I feel as though I spend too much time on social media and let it consume a lot of my mental space. Although I try to make an active effort to be aware of the content that I am consuming online, I find myself falling into the same rabbit holes. Whether celebrity gossip, beauty and fitness videos, or random viral clips here and there, I am consuming content that has little to no value to my life long term. Although I attempt to shift my feed to be more informative rather than entertainment focused, I always seem to end up right back where I started and get sucked into a spiral of unimportant and sometimes even damaging content. 

Even when I am feeling self aware of the content I am consuming, it has become such a social norm to be chronically online. It becomes so easy to justify spending hours on Instagram, Tiktok, or Twitter when everyone else is doing it too. Pointing out those harmful patterns has become more and more difficult with time as the increased use of technology has become more socially accepted and normalized. 

My family hasn't seemed to have hopped on the social media bandwagon. They still consume media through facebook, but have not really expanded beyond that into other social platforms. I think that while this may seem healthy or like a good example of minimal technology use, I argue that it could still have damaging effects on the formation of opinions and personal beliefs. Although I wouldn't say that spending more time on social media would be that beneficial, I do think that adding variety to the type of content and the source of your information could help enforce your ideas and opinions. When you are receiving information from one source and relying on the same people to like and comment on your posts, you could fall victim to confirmation bias. When sharing ideas you could be more inclined to believe that they are correct just because someone else is affirming you at that moment. 

My online footprint is probably in need of some work. While at first glance my social media platforms are tame and mostly personal, I understand that in today's age of technology, nothing disappears and there is always going to be a trail of everything you have ever posted online. With that in mind, I do worry about things I may have posted in my younger years without thought and that I have forgotten about to this day. However, I trust who I am now and have learned technological responsibility when sharing who I am online. I hope to only grow more wise in this area and be more conscious of what I choose to share in the future.