First Post: My Digital Life

It wasn’t until I went phoneless for a couple days that I fully comprehended how much I depended on technology.  

Here are all the apps I use: 

• Snapchat (communication and personal use) 
• GroupMe (academics, and communication) 
• Word (academics)  
• Spotify (personal use) 
• Youtube (academics and personal use) 
• IMessage (communication) 
• Outlook and Gmail (academics and communication) 
• Google (academics and personal use) 
• IDLE 3 and Python 3 (academics and personal use) 
• pearsons (academics) 
• Padlet (academics) 
• Canvas (academics) 
• Sakai (academics) 
• Ancestry.com (personal use) 
• Notes (academics and personal use) 
• App store (academics and personal use) 
• Livesafe (personal use) 
• Shopping websites (personal use)  
• Calendar app (academics and personal use) 

 

I’ll admit those couple of days, I was phoneless, I was not completely “off the grid.” I still had my iPad and my laptop. I found that being phoneless I missed being able to communicate with people easily. Every time I made plans with people, I had to email them and either hope they responded immediately or hope I did not miss their response. Before and after every class, I was obsessively scrolling through my emails and refreshing. I just hated how I could not be walking around and checking my texts. I needed to be sitting down in a place where my wifi was working.  

I was not suffering any form of withdrawal from not being able to access 90% of the apps I often used. But, I started to understand how inconvenient being “off the grid” is for many people. In retrospect, it made me realize how people and families who do not have access to technology, whether it is because of geography or money or numerous other factors, are put in a huge disadvantage in our new digitalized world where there is an app for everything. 

I had a conversation with a girl a couple years ago, about how we wish we went back to our flip phones (shout out to my old blue flip phone!), but a smart phone is much easier. We both questioned how “connected” we truly could be when the majority of our communications with people involved fillers or superficialities. Obviously, we did not mean every couple texting each other texts worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy did not mean it. I’m sure they did. But can you really say you’re friends with someone if you mostly text them and not talk to them? 

It is hard to feel a huge sense of community until you step foot in a place that technology does not rule the world.  

The apps I mentioned above all make my life easier. I can text someone dinner plans, while checking my calendar and searching up articles about the Israeli elections. If I did not have some sort of smart phone, I would not be able to do this so conveniently anywhere I wished. I admit this simple truth. Dare I say I NEED technology.  

Although, I depend on technology, I acknowledge that technology has not always helped me. Instead of sitting down and writing essays, I type them without feeling any connection to most of what I write. Instead of reading a physical book, I spend most of my time reading and skimming online resources. In our class we learned that online reading does not equal physically reading a book or article. Meaning that when we skim all those wikipedia pages we never fully understand them. Physically reading a book is always much better.  

Despite the tradeoffs of technology and the list goes on…we all need it. Even if it is not always a symbiotic relationship.