Digital Technology and Me
My earliest memories of using digital technology involve sitting at the family desktop playing games. I could spend hours sitting at that desk playing Tom and Jerry games. I didn’t use the internet for much else in those days. That changed when we got a family laptop, and I learned about skype. A friend and I got super into playing games together over Skype. We would spend hours skyping and playing fun games like movie star planet. I did a lot with skype over the years, and it had a significant impact on my life as I could talk to family and friends in real-time and add funny effects to myself. I thought it was the epitome of fun. Skype was my first ever exposure to video chatting, and I didn’t know how big of an influence video chatting would have later in my life.
It became a way for me to stay connected with those I love because seeing them in person always involved some risk.
During this period, I also got my first phone. It was exciting as I could call people without wifi, be in touch with my parents, and I could use it to access the internet, get apps and play games. In the beginning, I had so much fun just learning how to use it. I learned the intricacies of new forms of communication like texting and Social media. First, I got Instagram, and it was not as big as it is now. I would post fun photos( that I cringe at now) just about my daily life, and others would do the same. I even remember posting a picture of myself after I woke up with the caption being, “Hey, it's me in the morning.” That's how casual and fun I perceived Instagram to be. I don’t remember the explore or for you page customizing to each person and using its fancy algorithms to find out what people like. Then, I started to use Snapchat and would send my friends funny pictures every once in a while. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone or worrying about what people thought of me. I was just posting what I wanted to.
I can't pinpoint exactly when Instagram and Snapchat changed into the big platforms they are today, as I believe it was a gradual change. What I do remember is that my understanding of these digital platforms has changed a lot since I first started. As these sites began to change, I started to understand them as places where people would post big life events, and some people would rant about their lives, post funny memes, and even a place where people could become famous. Snapchat changed a lot, too, adding stories from magazines and different news organizations in the discover section and letting you subscribe to certain readings you liked. I remember that for a while, I was getting my news from the NBC news posted on Snapchat. I would watch it every day to get my news fill. The fact that I could get important news at my fingertips was crazy. As these social media platforms changed and became larger and more prominent, I found myself posting less and less, and I didn’t post casual pictures anymore. I would post pictures from fun events like dances, advertise shows I was in, post my grad pictures, and post about college, but I could go 6 months without posting anything. All of my photos and especially captions, were carefully crafted to look good, and I never posted just myself. I always included friends in my photos. I didn’t think I looked good in pictures, so having a friend with me lessened that fear. I was extremely self-conscious, and I didn’t want anyone to judge me. I was never one of those people who ranted about their life on social media. I read posts of people who did, but I never found the appeal of sharing personal details of my life on social media. This fear also stems from my fear of judgment. I still go on Instagram every day and look at what my friends post, but I rarely post. My Instagram for your page has specifically been catered to me after all these years, so it knows what I want. Mostly a lot of memes and video clips from the TV show Friends. I have definitely fallen down the rabbit hole of browsing my for you page for hours cause it always knows what I want. So, my perceptions of social media have gone from this fun, casual place where I would post whatever I wanted without fear of judgment to this formal platform that I have to look good on. I also use Snapchat every day just to send funny pictures to my friends and keep up our streaks. I didn’t get into streaks until after they became popular because I thought they were stupid. But I eventually hopped on the bandwagon.
As I grew up, my understanding of video chatting platforms changed, but my understanding went through a massive change when the pandemic hit. When I was younger, I only used skype to talk with friends while playing games, talk to friends casually, or talk to my family. I understood it as the only video chatting platform I could use, and I always enjoyed it. As I got older, I started to use facetime more and more, and skype fell away. Facetime became my primary source of video chat as most of my friends had iPhones. I saw it as a way to chat with people when I wasn’t seeing them in person, help someone when they were sad, and just talk to people in real-time because I often enjoy real-time talking rather than texting. Then the pandemic hit, and I became familiar with and quite frequently used video chatting sites such as zoom and google meet. Video chatting wasn’t just about talking to people for fun; it was the safest way to talk to people in real-time. It was the only human interaction I could really get with people outside my family. It became a way for me to stay connected with those I love because seeing them in person always involved some risk. Video chat has been the primary way I talk to my grandma as she is high risk, and I believe that human interaction really helps her, and I know it helps me through the pandemic's craziness. The pandemic has made me understand video chatting as important and essential to maintaining the human connection I crave. My understanding of digital technology has changed a lot over my life, and I know it will continue to change.
