Key Blogpost #4 - Final Blogpost, My Relationship with Technology

The first memory of my relationship with technology was at the end of Elementary school when all my classmates were getting excited over Facebook. My family at first was very much against me making a account but over time they were convinced and I able to create an account. There were a good three to four weeks of elementary school when Facebook became increasingly popular and my friends began actively creating accounts. I was probably 7 or 8 years old at the time and thought I was super cool due to the fact that I had a Facebook account where I could communicate with, and play Facebook games like Restaurant City and Ninja Saga with my online and school friends. At the same point in my life, I had a Gameboy Color to play Pokémon Sapphire and old Tony Hawk games. Another gaming platform which I enjoyed growing up was the original first generation Xbox.

From ages 10-15, I graciously received my first ever phone. It was an old Android Blackberry; a phone which the only thing interesting about it, was the stylus and a game called “Brick." At the time this seemed like the peak of entertainment. I barely used my Blackberry for anything other than a poorly made gaming device. Around the same time, my neighbor came by my house in a generous mood with a first generation Xbox saying he wasn’t interested in using it anymore. From then on my interest in gaming devices like Xbox and PlayStation skyrocketed and I discovered even more ways to mess around and enjoy myself with friend’s I’ve made from across the nation. Around the age of 14, my parents bought me a desktop. This not only helped me manage and complete my school work, but also allowed me to expand my knowledge of and interest in the internet. As I turned 15, my social media presence began to develop as I made accounts on applications like Instagram and Snapchat.

At the time, both Instagram and Snapchat seemed like apps where users would post either humorous events which happened throughout their day or positive hyper representations of what their day was actually like. I wouldn’t fault Snapchat for such practices because it seems like more of a playful app that shouldn’t be taken as seriously, but Instagram was and is a platform which people view with the understanding that what they are seeing is true. During the 2016 election in senior year of high school, my relationship with social media platforms like Facebook completely changed. At a time, I knew very little about politics and which side I agreed with, it seemed like everyone and their Grandma was posting their political opinions and complaints on Facebook. Additionally, I went to an intensely democratic school and went home to a republican family where the political ideas were much different. Students with any republican opinions would be instantly ostracized without a second to explain themselves. The amount of toxicity was too overwhelming and I couldn’t handle the amount of arguments and complaints which I saw online, leading to my eventual leaving of Facebook.

If I were to examine my current social media presence, I would see a ton of old yet nostalgic videos posted on Facebook with some more modern pictures posted on Instagram. Realizing the amount of hate someone can get from their online presence emphasized by events like the 2016 election, I became less and less motivated to share my opinions on social media platforms to an audience. Most of the people I see on Instagram are not like me and would be happy to post 3-4 times a week displaying the perfect life they’re living, but I’d rather be the one to post something once a month or couple of months that truly represents the world that I'm living in. I am not one to appreciate those who over exaggerate their lifestyle or body through mediums like social media and would rather people be more truthful in the representations they post depicting their lives.

Blog Post #5 - Diffusion of Innovations: TikTok

TikTok is one of the few social media platforms which I feel disconnected from and unequipped to engage with. I stayed off the app and remained a very ant-TikTok kind of guy for the majority of my relationship with the platform. The bulk of the content I saw from the website seemed to be catered towards a younger demographic. Additionally, the dance/ lip-singing videos in my opinion were either extremely cringey, hypersexualized, or both. Most of which would circulate through millions of phones becoming extremely popular due to the platform’s surprisingly ingenuitive algorithm. All that being said, I did download the app, and TikTok now takes up at least 3 hours of screen time for me a week. TikTok won.

I couldn’t stay off the app any longer. It seemed like each of my friend groups continued to share, post, and watch more and more videos on TikTok. Eventually I found enough entertaining niche content which I enjoyed watching and coming back to. I would consider myself to be part of the “late majority” when applying the position to the Law of Diffusion of Innovation theory. I remember the “innovators” and “early adopters” of the app when younger audiences were determined to find and create the new “Vine” (which was another wildly successful social media site similar to TikTok today but with shorter videos). As the controversial rumors involving the Chinese company’s allegedly facial tracking/documenting of its users began to fade, the app’s popularity continued to grow as it entered the “early majority” stage.

TikTok still is filled with cringey and hypersexualized content, but now older audiences are trying to get popular doing the same things creating a toxic cesspool of users being unnecessarily rude, bullied, objectified, and harrassed. The same audience who spread their negativity towards the younger audiences. Additionally the application has very poor censorship. Incredibly inappropriate videos get posted and shared around hundreds of thousands of times before the algorithm removes them. Yes there are a decent amount of positives which came from TikTok, but I still feel strongly that it’s corrupting our newer technological generations, teaching them that such negative or hypersexualized practices are acceptable/encouraged.