This is an interesting topic for me to reflect on, as this is a daily discussion in our house. Living in a world or pre teen and teenagers there is always conversations about how much time they are on their devices…but to be honest I never relate it to how much I am on mine. Reality is my phone is with me at all hours of the day and night, it has become my lifeline. If I don’t have my phone at an accessible reach then I am wearing my apple watch so that I feel like you can get ahold of me whenever you need to. I never felt that I needed to be able to be reached at all times until I got my first iPhone, oh the things I could do on here that I couldn’t do on my old flip phone or blackberry. Since getting my first iPhone, my digital camera has long been forgotten, it is so much easier to pull my phone out and capture every moment that I want to.
When I look at my daily tech life, it’s actually astonishing how much I use it in my everyday life. Now that I have returned to school I spend countless of hours on my laptop each week, and it has opened a whole new world of possibility for me as many classes can be done online and cut down on the amount I would have to drive to return to university. It took a whole lot of stress off of me knowing that I could now do 95% of my degree online-it was now feasible as working mom to finally finish my degree. If I look at how much time I spend on Facebook and Instagram, it’s embarrassing to admit how many hours I waste on both of these apps, most of the time I am irritated and annoyed by the time I’m done-this in itself should be a reason to cut back, but what do I do instead, I mute those people so there feed isn’t constantly on mine. I do use Snapchat intermitedly, more so I can watch where my kids are on their maps, which I do admit that if I was a kid that would make me crazy!!
During COVID times and at home learning as a family we really started using more educational apps. I worked in the school system as an EA so I had to learn how these apps all worked on the teacher side, which again I am not super techy so I had to learn the backside of these apps as well as the student side to help my kids get through this process. We used Seesaw and Microsoft Teams on a daily basis to complete school work and communicate with teachers and students. I also learned how to use Boom Cards as an extra fun learning tool with students. Right now the app that I use for my children in school is Edsby. I find this app super useful as a parent, I like that I can pre set attendance when I know my child will miss school and I am able to keep track of their grades as often as I want. I feel like this is one of the best educational apps that we have been given to use.
There are many apps that we use to keep our family organized. The main one we use is Timetree, this is a calendar app, I am able to color code each of our family members and they an also be added so that everyone knows where everyone is supposed to be, it has became such a handy tool for our busy family. We also use TeamLinkt and TeamSnap for extra curricular schedules, this can also be downloaded on multiple family devices, I do prefer Teamsnap over TeamLinkt it is far easier to navigate as a coach and parent.
I took a half time leave from my job this fall to do schoolwork in the afternoons when my kids are in school, I am finding that I often get distracted by my phone, mostly playing yatzee and randomly scrolling social media. I then find myself opening my laptop once my kids go to bed and I am up until late everyday, which turns into a vicious circle of being tired everyday, so this is something I need to work at and get better at putting my phone down and buckling down. One app that I have not downloaded is TikTok, I know that this app will consume massive amounts of my time and therefore I have stayed clear of it, trying to not get into the dreaded dark TikTok hole.
Technology definitely has its time and place and it has made our lives better in many ways, but I for one need to do better at putting it down and enjoying the things in life more.
