Final Post

    Just like anything else in this world, technologies including social media definitely has its pros and cons. Personally, I use social media everyday, whether I am texting, checking media feeds, or watching YouTube. I have some friends that are on their phones checking social media what seems like every second of the day. However, I have been trying to set a screen time goal for myself where less time is spent checking social media than the last week. For example, my screen time this week was two hours and twenty nine minutes, which is seventeen percent less than the last week. I have been trying to do this because I caught myself several times checking my phone when I am at a social event whether it was because I was nervous or bored. Continuing on this path, hypothetically, I would end up with zero minutes of social media every week. This is not my goal. I believe that social media and the internet are the greatest inventions of our generation and our lives will soon be dependent on our devices that we need them to continue walking this earth. Although I have limited my social media usage drastically over the past few years, I am still working to reduce the total time spent on my device to below two hours. I am proud of the improvement I have done to limit my usage but definitely am not done yet.

    Handheld devices have evolved from flip phones to small computer screens that fit in our pocket. The capabilities of our phones in our pocket is one hundred thousand times more powerful than the "Apollo 11" computer used by NASA in 1969. These facts alone are so mind-blowing to me that we are able to take a base model design and improve upon it for several decades and finish with a device that could guide one hundred twenty million Apollo-era spacecrafts to the moon. However, this brings up discussion for the future of these devices. Considering technology is evolving at an exponential rate, the rate of change for social media will be greater and faster than ever before. Virtual reality is one of the recent advancements to technology and has already established itself as a popular outlet. However, several problems have already occurred related to virtual reality. A handful of people have become so connected to their virtual world that they prefer that over real life. 

    Unfortunately, technology hurts our health and society. We have already become so heavily reliant on technology that the way we think and our physical bodies have been damaged. As a whole, humans' eyesight, posture, and brains have had negative changes since the introduction of the internet to the public. In order to avoid these negative changes, we are encouraged to be active, focus more, and be fully aware of the state of our mental health. Furthermore, technology has replaced many real human connections and social skills of several individuals. Young people now are struggling more than ever to set their phones down at the dinner table to actually socialize with friends and family. Technology can both mediate relationships with others, maintaining happiness, or can be detrimental through a lack of intimacy. Technology has, alone, increased suicide rates across the globe, introducing new terms such as "cyberbullying," "cancelling," "ghosting," "or revenge porn." These terms called "unintended consequences" are are the result of an evolving social media platform where everyone can say anything to anyone.