The Internet

The use of the internet to talk to someone, how we "connect" with people, and the exponential growth of technology, puts real human interactions at risk. As Sherry Turkle talks about, the more we "connect" with people through technology, the more we isolate ourselves from using real communication. When my brother and I got our first cell phones, I was 12 and he was 14. They were flip phones, as smart phones were just starting to come out, and in the matter of less than 10 years, the phones we use now are much more advanced than they were when we got our first ones. This advancement has allowed us to do so much, but it has also taken a very valuable aspect of our lives away, and that is connecting on an emotional and physical level with people as close to us as our mom and dad. Luckily, I noticed this happening at an early age, especially with my mom, who is literally addicted to her phone. I've made it a goal to always put my phone away around family, when I'm with friends, or when someone is talking to me. I find it extremely scary to see the loss of connection between people, and feel it in my own life due to our phones being our main concern, and not the human that is present with us in that moment. Turkle showed a picture of her daughter and her daughter's friends all sitting in a room together, but all on their phones. What should be important is the people you have right in front of you, not the online people you're looking at, or the pages by people you don't even know. Why should they matter more than the close friends who are sitting right next to you? They shouldn't. Now, when I'm with friends or family, we will literally put our phone in another room in order to be present with one another, and have the human interaction we need. The scary thing to me is that connecting face-to-face with someone, or talking emotionally with someone, is scarier than doing all the same things over texting. It shouldn't be like that because it causes us to be more alone than we've ever been before. Sometimes those human interactions are even halted because we're busy playing various games on our phones as well.

Personally, I don't have any games on my phone. I used to have several, but now I don't. In my pass-time, I like to watch motivational life videos, read a book on my kindle, or call my parents as I now live far from them. Games, to me, seem like a mind waster. Instead of looking at a screen playing a game on your phone, you can spend that half hour or hour looking at something that will empower you, give you more knowledge, or inform you about something you didn't know. I find this to be way more interesting than playing a game on my phone during the short amount of down time I have.

Being in school, and working, I feel like a large chunk of my life is spent on my phone or computer. I've accepted this, but in my down time, I make an effort to leave technology behind. I have a routine where I will do my homework and work over a certain amount of hours, but then when I get home I get to go on my phone for an hour to relax and "zone out" from all the studying and work I had done that day. This veg out session consists of doing a little reading, checking out Instagram for some dinner ideas, or going on YouTube and watching some videos. After this time is done, I always exercise for at least an hour. I find this helps me get away from technology, and free my body of toxins and stress from that day that may be built up. After this, I like to cook, sit and talk with my boyfriend when he gets home from work, clean the house, write down in our summer journal what our day consisted of (we're in San Francisco for the summer so we're logging our days), and then just relaxing and talking about our days together and what we're grateful for. This "unplugging" is so essential in my life, as I get extremely anxious when I realize how much time I've spent on technology in a day. I also find it as a great way to make a balance in such a technologically savvy era.