Final Blog

 Technology can be a good thing and a bad thing. I think that my relationship with technology is health. Although I use technology a lot I can also go without it for some time. Sometimes I just like to put my phone down and not look at it. I think there are times when I spend too much time on technology. Since the pandemic, I am definitely on the internet more than I was before. I think at times technology is taking up my life. Growing up I never really used it, and with covid happening, many things are online which makes people be on the internet a lot more and use their technology for entertainment. I think at some points technology can inform me and make me smarter to a certain extent. There is so much on technology that you can learn from. I do think that technology can be misleading because there is so much information out on the internet and you don't always know what is true and what isn't true. I don't worry about things that can be misleading just because some of the information is obvious and you can tell when it is not true or not. I do think that you just have to accept it because it is part of the society that we live in. There are good and bad when it comes to technology but one thing you have to understand is that you need to be cautious if you are going to interact with technology.

    Many teenagers these days rely on technology and grew up using technology 24/7. It has caused many people to go into a bad state of mind and take their lives. Social media today has exposed teenagers to things at a young age. I know I was only allowed on certain platforms when I was younger. My mom did not allow me to have Facebook until a certain age because of so much that you can discover on Facebook. There were times where. I didn't think as a young high school and thought about posting things on social media that could affect my future, but have been taught growing up not to do that so I have done a very good job of making sure I post things on social media that are appropriate for everyone to see. I'm not a person to hide certain things in my life on social media, I like to post with friends and family and keep everyone updated on my life, but there are some things that I believe can be kept private and off of social media that is between family and friends. In high school, I went through a phase of always having to check my social media every day to see what was going on, and if I didn't I get stressed. Now that I am older I have learned that I don't need to be on social media all the time in order to get in touch with people and see what people are doing. It is okay to not be on social media every day and to just take time to yourself and spend time with friends and family. I learned many things in high school when it came to posting certain things on social media because I went to a boarding school. You always wanted to make sure that you were posting photos and videos that would not risk you from getting in trouble with the school. I learned from many people in my high school not to do that because it got them suspended or expelled.

    I believe that social media is not good for young teens. They are still figuring themselves out as a person and social media can have an effect on that. The Childs Mind Institution has an article on their page about how using social media affects teenagers. Rachel Ehmke who wrote this article talks about the surveys that were done. Experts have worried that social media and texting can promote anxiety and lower self-esteem. A survey was conducted by the Royal Society for Public Health and asked people around the ages of 14-24 in the United Kindom how social media impacted their health. The survey found that Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all lead to increased feelings of depression, anxiety, body image, and loneliness. I believe that many young teens really do look to social media because it is an easy way for them to make friends, but that can come with the people that are not nice on social media. Unfortunately, many teenagers deal with online bullying from people that they go to school with and other places that they know teenagers. Many people find it easy to bully people online because they are behind a screen. I remember when I was in high school there was an app that was going around the high school and you could write something and it would be anonymous. some of the posts were nice, but many of them were not nice. I think that is a huge part of teenagers' mental health. No matter who the person is or how much that person shouldn't affect you, it always does affect you especially when it is on social media for everyone to see and comment.

    I think that social media has affected me in some ways. It can put you in a bad place and it can be hard to get out of it. Although you see all of the mean comments on people's social media, there are always people out there giving nice comments on social media. Online bullying is never going to change and it's just going to have to be something that you may have to consider dealing with if you are going to be on social media and put yourself out there for the world to see.

https://www.google.com/search?q=social+media&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS908US908&sxsrf=ALeKk02kL0QICqr3KVVIOfpw0gQVDVFQnw:1607113488951&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi_m_2klLXtAhUCzlkKHc4jCOQQ_AUoAnoECBEQBA&biw=1440&bih=696 

https://childmind.org/article/how-using-social-media-affects-teenagers/

Here is my presentation that I did. I decided to do it from just my perspective of technology and the basics, and then have everything else in the blog.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1RPK-0qzv90R2pCJy2a62JNe9mv5dnkqSWBX7W8-AUA0/edit#slide=id.gade1f01efb_0_87