As we have seen with this week’s content in CI 3342, technology has increased significantly in the younger age more than ever now. According to commonsensemedia.org, there was 41% of teens with a smartphone in 2012 and it increased to 89% by 2018. That is incredibly high and surprisingly because this means that they are spending more time on their smart phone rather than interacting with each other face to face. Even have a statistic shown that communication of face-to-face went from 49% to 32% because they rather use social media and video chatting as their communication option. As the video shown on there too that the teens was saying how often they pick up their phone during homework, school, dinner, etc… It’s almost as if they can not go on living without their phone.
According to pewsearch.org, the majority used social media platform for adults is YouTube and Facebook. They both dominate in the social media industry as shown in the graph and I’m surprised how much of a difference it is compared to all the other ones. With the pandemic, I expected other social media platforms to be close to either one of these but it is far from it. Although, this is data around adults only meaning that if measured with data from teens and younger, there may be a difference with how the graph looks like. During the start of the pandemic, everyone was doing nothing besides be on social media. It was the way of feeling free because you would keep yourself occupy by using social media. Using social media as a communication tool with others that you want to keep close with.
As mentioned in a twitter feed, there was the quote of “It’s not that we use technology, we live technology” by Godfrey Reggie. We wake up and use our technology throughout the day till we go back to sleep and this cycle repeats. Technology is there to provide us assistance by making things easier for us to operate our daily lives. With extreme usage of technology, you would have no time spending “off screen” as people would say. It is something that a lot of people are catching themselves doing during the pandemic. With people working at home now too, they are spending more time looking at a screen more than ever. It is exhausting looking at a screen all day long and so the goal is to have time to spend on doing anything that doesn’t involve a screen.
I remember reading somewhere that said people are scared of missing out on something so that’s why they are always checking their phone constantly. I think this is like some sort of symptom of having a phone because it happens to everyone. As soon as you hear a notification, you check your phone right away because you think it’s something important to see, but it would just be an irrelevant notification. That’s why if I am out or doing important things, most of the time I wouldn’t touch my phone unless it rings. If someone is not calling me, I don’t think it’s important enough to derive me from what I’m currently doing. I enjoy spending time outside so I spend less time on my phone when I am out than when I’m at home.
Work Citied
Auxier, Brooke, and Monica Anderson. “Social Media Use in 2021.” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, Pew Research Center, 31 Jan. 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media-use-in-2021/.
“Social Media, Social Life Infographic: Common Sense Media.” Common Sense Media: Ratings, Reviews, and Advice, https://www.commonsensemedia.org/social-media-social-life-infographic.
