Final Post

 My Relationship With Technology

The little devices that we use everyday hold so much power over us. Instead of being in the present we are often in another world on our phones. We are no longer as aware of our surroundings and always have our faces in our phones, looking at what other people are doing, watching mindless videos, or catching up on what is going on in our world (which is usually misleading information.) 

These little devices hold our whole life in them, from our cherished photos to text message conversations that we would never want to get out. On average, we as Americans spend about 7 hours and 4 minutes on their phones each day.  This is about 107 days a year that we spend on our phones. This average of daily screen time has increased by 50 minutes a day since 2013. 

As much as I would love to say that I don't fall under these statistics, that is simply not true. Looking at my screen time statistics as of December 13, 2022 I spend an average of 6 hours on my phone each day. For me, the majority of this time is spent on TikTok, text messages, and Netflix. 

Just like most American teenagers, I too am addicted to my phone. When I am bored I will spend countless hours on TikTok, instead of going to bed I will spend hours scrolling through social media, when I want to communicate with someone I will text them. This makes my relationship with technology unhealthy since I depend on it to keep me entertained instead of occupying my time with something healthy like exercise. 

I give too much of my time to technology instead of giving that time to my family, friends, pets, and even academics. Something that I find myself doing too often is getting distracted while completing a schoolwork assignment. I will often pick up my phone and mindlessly get distracted by scrolling through social media when I should be completing my assignment. Using social media or texting, makes it more difficult to learn and retain the information, increases the time it takes to complete homework, and may ultimately result in lower test scores.

The biggest problem with how much time Americans spend on their phone is how much misleading information we read and think is true. Since anyone can put anything on the internet and social media a lot of this information is false. A study found that 64% of adults believe fake news stories. How much of the internet is fake? Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot. 

This means that in most cases these hours that we spend on our technology is not making us smarter and informing us, but rather informing us with fake information. I often worry that what I read and see is false so I will almost always try to find other websites and opinions to weed out what is true and what is misleading information. I do this most often when I see a cool product on the internet that I am interested in buying. After reading other websites and reviews I often find that the product is a scam. However most people do not worry that the information they get from the internet is fake and just believe whatever they see. 

In the majority of cases technology has an unhealthy hold on everyone. It is now very common to see a family out at a restaurant and everyone is on their phones instead of engaging with each other in real time. This often hurts our relationships with our friends and families. However, if you do not live very close to your family, technology helps us to keep in touch with our loved ones. We can pick up our phones and call or text them at any time since we are unable to see them in person a lot. Before cell phones it was very hard to keep in touch with loved ones that live far away. 

After googling "Lacy Nicole Waggoner" these images of myself came up. All came from newspaper articles. The first photo is of me competing in the regional tennis tournament in high school. The second photo is my friends and I's photos in the newspaper when we won all county scholar. The third photo of me is when I was legion queen for the veterans day parade in my hometown. Although these are all photos that I would not mind an employer seeing, what also comes up is links to my TikTok account, Instagram account, Twitter account and so on. Although there is nothing inappropriate on any of my social media accounts, I would not necessarily want an employer scrolling through these accounts. 

In conclusion, we should all be more aware of how much of our information can be accessed through the internet and should keep this in mind when posting something. We should also always check other websites after reading something on the internet since there is so much misleading information out there. Most importantly, we should spend more of our time with our friends and families in the present.