Final Blog Post (Our Relationship with Technology)

     This entire topic is honestly the most interesting to me because as I looked further and further into this, I became more and more frightened, specifically with certain "internet titans" like Google and Facebook. I just couldn't help but think: "Do we really use their technology that often? Honestly, I'm not surprised that we do since everyone has their own type of relationship with technology at this point, including myself. Even I am currently using technology in order to write this blog post. To be honest, I'm not really sure if there's anything we can really do about the amount of technology around us. 

    I would like to start off with how I would view my relationship with technology. Like everyone else, technology has the capability to make a strong impact on one's life. It definitely made an impact on my life, as I have a visual impairment, so technology can be a big help for me. It's allowed me to do my work better, learn about new things, and (most of the time) give me answers to questions I may have. I'll admit that it isn't all that great. Staring at a screen for long periods of time can be bad for my eyes and there can be issues that may prevent me from doing my work or watching something. When I use it for fun or leisurely stuff like video games, there are times that it can get me addicted to it for a long time, and it further encourages me to procrastinate, but I still manage to do what I need to do first No matter how I shape it, technology has been a part of my life since forever and I've learned to accept that.

    As for my family, I suppose I could say the same thing, especially regarding my siblings. I can't say exactly when they were introduced to technology, but I guess ever since they were toddlers as we all had electronic toys at that age. Then the wondrous invention of television came along and we were all hooked on kids' shows, but our parents limited us to only watch TV and play video games on weekends and breaks as they didn't want it to interfere with our schoolwork. As we got older, we were introduced to various handheld devices ranging from the Kindle Fire to the Nintendo 3DS. Honestly, we got hooked. So hooked that we took them almost everywhere we went (besides school). It was basically Futurama for us at the time. Now it's the present day, as my sister is somewhat active on social media while introducing my little brother to TikTok. I myself didn't really take part in that as I didn't want to be addicted and being on social media seemed like too much of a hassle.

 

    Regarding my online footprint, I feel that I keep my print relatively small as I prefer to keep my private life private and not post it for all the world to see. The only thing I have close to social media is Linkedin where people can learn a little bit about me on a professional level. The funny thing is I thought of googling myself as a bit self-centered in a weird way. I mean, unless you wanted to know more about your family history, why would you google yourself? After I did, I saw my LinkedIn account as my first result, my blog link, my interest account, and my name, age, and address on MyLife., which honestly kinda freaked me out a bit. I was certainly surprised to see there were more people with the name "Onafowokan." What I was really surprised about was on Legacy.com, there was a bit written about "Rosanna Olufumilayo Onafowokan," my grandmother from my dad's side of the family who passed away a long time ago. It even had the names of all the grandchildren, me included. After all of that, I now see that I'm not quite as private as I thought I was. If I could, I would take care of the stuff on MyLife and my interest account as I don't feel comfortable with random strangers knowing everything bout me. However, I will leave LinkedIn on so employers can look me up and learn about me only on a professional level.

    Learning more about technology and how it continues to advance in our daily lives, I am aware that there are lots of unintended consequences as a result, but out of all of them, I feel that Cyberbullying could be one of the most serious causes of unintended consequences, more so than the ghosting and the revenge pr0n. I had no idea how cyberbullying had so much of a negative influence on people that it would actually drive them to suicide. It's so surprising that it's honestly scary. This is one of the reasons why I personally keep my life away from the internet. I feel there must be some sort of solution to stop cyberbullying, or at the very least find a way to help those people who are being cyberbullied so they don't make any rash decisions.

    All that being said, technology is definitely not the root of all evil here. In fact, the amount of technology adapting to our very lives while continuing to advance and improve is pretty amazing. When it comes down to it, It's really not the tech, but the people who use it. Many people have worked so hard to create revolutionary things that have stapled into our society, such as the internet. It's a great tool when used correctly, but of course, it's a not-so-great tool for people who use it for things like internet scams, deep fakes, the dark web, pr0n, etc. I do wish we could enforce ways on how to use technology properly, but everyone has the freedom to do what they want, so I know enforcing these ideals will be difficult. I feel the only solution is to properly teach our generation and future ones how to use our tech properly. It's the only way to improve our relationship and future ones in general.