Soooo … when I think about my relationship with tech, it reminds me of my younger years when tech played a very simple role in my life. Starting with TV when I was a kid watching things like cartoons and Family/Disney Channel.

This channel brings make so many amazing memories as it was a major a point of connection with my family. We’d all cozy up in our living room together and laugh at shows like Hannah Montana, Suite Life of Zack and Cody, Wizards of Waverly Place, Sonny with a Chance, and Jessie!

As I got older, and further into elementary school, I got my first mp3 player.

It only had about 12 songs on it that would play over and over but I absolutely loved it. I would listen to them over and over, never getting tired of them. Anytime I hear one of those songs now, (Bad Day by Daniel Powter being the most triggering) it still reminds me of those moments on the bus or in my bedroom giving a very dramatic performance as if I actually had an audience.

When I got a bit older, I got my mom’s old Samsung cellphone that was a snazzy red and white combo with a keyboard that slid out. My friends and I would text back and forth all the time, which was a lot of fun!

A few years later when    , and eventually     and     started hitting the scene, everyone was getting an iPod Touch and eventually an iPhone (my first was a 6). My friends and I made the craziest music videos on an app called VideoStar  

– which to my surprise, is still up and running these days! I suppose they were AHEAD of the times.

I would say social media began as a place that was light, fun and pretty care free! It consisted of silly selfies with your friends or reposting memes that made you laugh.

Fast forward to now, where many people are using all these different social media platforms (Instagram, TikTok, etc.) as their own personal “vlog” and also a source of income/as their career.

For me personally, I’m heavier on the consumer side of the scale vs the posting side. To be completely honest, I know social media gets a bad wrap and there are absolutely a million negative things you could say about it. But for me, I enjoy seeing what others are up to. It’s an indirect way of connecting but also staying in the loop! There are people I haven’t seen since high school that I follow, but you never know when you may run into them! I think it’s nice to know what’s going on in their life so you are able to ask them about it when you see them 🙂

A great deal of my time is also spent on my laptop focusing on school work. Somedays, it’s a battle to get it open. But once I do, I find I can get into a flow pretty easily. The hardest part for me is actually STARTING. I remember when COVID hit I was midway through my psychology degree. We ended up finishing it all online and to be honest I loved having my own time to get through the material at a quicker pace and being able to watch the zoom lectures back to make sure I didn’t miss any information the first time through the lecture. I found that I was able to manage my time well, and that I had a lot more free time to do other things I enjoyed like going to the gym and outside for walks. It also helped that my brother was starting his degree at the same time from home so we helped keep each other accountable but would also do something together outside of the house each day!

Currently, I am relying on the Outlook app a lot for all of my scheduling as well as having access to my school email on the tab beside. This makes it highly efficient and easy to add things into your calendar and make sure you are staying up to date with all the course information and questions you may have for your peers or profs in the same place. The other part of the outlook app I use is the To Do List – it helps me keep track of all the other little things I need to get done and not have so much to keep track of inside my brain. Outside of this, I use Microsoft Word for most of my note-taking and open PowerPoints for school purposes. I am now adding Canva to my repetoire as one of my main sources of tech. So far I have been using Youtube and TikTok to help me learn more about it!

In order to maintain a level of balance between academic and personal tech-use I have limited myself to half an hour on social media each day using the screen time option in settings.

Although you have the ability to override this, it comes with a lot more guilt that usually isn’t worth the extra scroll, LOL!

After I have spent that long consuming information that isn’t particularly necessary, I realize it’s time to switch to something more productive. There is ALWAYS something that could be done school wise that could help me improve my grades, get ahead of the game, or even just ask questions to ensure I am on the right track with certain assignments. I also have noticed how much better I truly feel when I am using tech for productive purposes rather than just casual consumption or scrolling. Academically, I am actually using my brain and being creative while having to think. On the personal note …. not so much – in fact it may even lead to negative or overthinking … which isn’t great either.

In conclusion, tech has it’s list of pros and cons for me – as do most things in life!