CONGRATS EVERYBODY!!!!! So for those of you reading this blog for purposed of UofL, congratulations for completing the semester! I am super excited because now I only have a couple more to go :) The assignment this week, over the Thanksgiving holiday was to unplug from all devices and I must say I am actually pretty impressed and pleased with what happened. So the challenge was to unplug for as long as you could, but at least for half of a day. I was able to stay off of social media for a whole day, but ended up having to text message after half of a day. I chose Thanksgiving day, since my daughter would be with me I would not have to use the excuse that I needed to be readily available to my phone for communication regarding her. So we woke up late, I usually grab my phone right away an we both spend a few minutes playing on the phone, then we get up and get ready. (We being me and my baby). But Thanksgiving morning, I woke up right away and got up and made breakfast for us, then woke her up. I did turn on music, which was connected to my phone so that it wouldn't be creepily quiet in our apartment. So I picked the easiest day possible, or in my opinion anyway, because we remained so busy that I didn't even get a chance to really want to scroll social media. Once I left my mothers I got my phone out to text my boyfriend to let him know that we were headed home. I didn't mean to really write about every detail of my day, but I wanted to prove that I had to stay busy in order to not think about grabbing my phone.
These days people are so hidden behind little boxes of technology that we do not know how to have a conversation with another human, face to face. But put a computer screen between us and each of us will feel as thought that computer screen is a 6 foot thick, bullet proof wall that we can say anything and it wont effect us one bit. This is why bullying happens so much online, as well as sexual assaults. I loved feeling free and like I could do anything that I wanted to and not have to report to anybody. Going through the day feeling like I have to constantly be connected to the outside world is like living with a house arrest bracelet. I want to do what I want and be in that moment and enjoy it to its fullest. It makes me so sick, to see couples, or children with their parents out to dinner and everybody is buried in their phones.
After Thanksgiving when I made a point to not pick up my phone, just one day made it so much easier to not even think about it. I almost hate having my phone sometimes because I am forced to suffer reprocusions if I do not answer emails and texts in a timely manner. This is from work, parents, family, boyfriend, neighbors, everybody. It is expected that a person with a phone should be on call 24/7, and that is not fair. We need to go back to living our lives for ourselves and our own pleasure, not for how many "likes" we can get.
These days people are so hidden behind little boxes of technology that we do not know how to have a conversation with another human, face to face. But put a computer screen between us and each of us will feel as thought that computer screen is a 6 foot thick, bullet proof wall that we can say anything and it wont effect us one bit. This is why bullying happens so much online, as well as sexual assaults. I loved feeling free and like I could do anything that I wanted to and not have to report to anybody. Going through the day feeling like I have to constantly be connected to the outside world is like living with a house arrest bracelet. I want to do what I want and be in that moment and enjoy it to its fullest. It makes me so sick, to see couples, or children with their parents out to dinner and everybody is buried in their phones.
After Thanksgiving when I made a point to not pick up my phone, just one day made it so much easier to not even think about it. I almost hate having my phone sometimes because I am forced to suffer reprocusions if I do not answer emails and texts in a timely manner. This is from work, parents, family, boyfriend, neighbors, everybody. It is expected that a person with a phone should be on call 24/7, and that is not fair. We need to go back to living our lives for ourselves and our own pleasure, not for how many "likes" we can get.
I have honestly learned so much from taking this course, and I feel that it has been one of the most useful, realistic courses in college thus far. One thing that I learned that sticks out to me is our privacy, or lack thereof when we use the internet. I have been hanging out with some girl friends before and we got on dating sites and filled out questionaires for the heck of it, because who is going to ever see it, right?! That is the first thing that popped into my mind when we started talking about privacy and watched the video about how many different sites are able to see what you post on the dating site, it was unreal, and scary. The web is such a huge, infinite place, that we just see the one screen in front of us and we assume that is it. We all need to be more careful when we are on the internet, and especially social media when we feel the need to post every single second in detail, WITH locations of what we are doing and where we are at the moment. We need to again, disconnect and live our lives!!!!