Final Post

 When I ask myself the question if my relationship with technology is healthy I lean towards no. I like most of my generation spend a lot of my time with my face buried in my phone. But I do think I have a good reason to do so some of the time. 

Since I became a college student I am away from my family and my best friends from home so naturally I try to stay connected to my loved ones when I am away. I find myself spending hours snapchatting my best friend or just calling her so we can update each other on our day and what is going on. However it would be healthier to just have a scheduled call time and to stay off social media so much. I also text my mom a lot and send her pictures throughout my day so we can stay connected because I learned it is easy to disconnect from loved ones when I am away. 

I definitely go too far with my technology use and overuse it which is something I am working on. When I looked at my screen time on my phone it shocked me to see that I spend almost 4 hours on my phone daily. The most used being tik tok and snapchat. On tik tok I like others who spend hours just mindlessly scrolling when I could be doing more productive things with my time. 

A huge thing I hate about social media is the culture of posting your every move, although I am guilty of this. It is like a constant competition to have the most “interesting” and fun life but it is all fake which leads to people feeling like they are doing something wrong.  FOMO or the fear of missing out is something a lot of people experience and it is all because of social media. 86% of people admit to looking at social media because of their FOMO and 39% of people admit to letting their FOMO control what events they go to. Social media is controlling our lives. 

Social media is also a huge contributor to mental health decline. It is hard to stay positive when there are a lot of negative things posted constantly on our feeds. A lot of people also feel pressure to live up to certain standards all because of what they are consuming online. I personally have been victim to feeling bad about myself but then over time I learned that social media is fake and now I take everything with a grain of salt. 41% of women on social media have reported feeling bad about their looks because of social media. It is hard to maintain good mental health when you are constantly consuming strangers' lives on the internet. 

It is very crucial to remember the harm technology can do to anyone, not just women or teenagers. I encourage everyone to make sure they lower their screen time and spend time out in the real world with loved ones. Get off the phone!