Technologically Trained

Being born in the year 2000, my peers and I were introduced to technology at a very young age and were able to quickly adapt to the world of smartphones, laptops, and social media. Something the people my age and I have always related to each other with is that all of our parents and elders, despite having more life experiences than us, are much less technologically advanced than our age group. As a baby, you are exposed to the language that you will be speaking in for the rest of your life. It is easy to pick up on and naturally begin to speak in a language at that age because you are constantly learning how to actually be a human being. Once somebody is at an age where they speak their language fluently, it is much harder for them to learn a different language. This is just like the concept of learning how to use technology. Introduce to smartphones in just elementary school, the members of my generation have not truly experienced life without touch screens and a variety of social media platforms. We wonder why our parents cannot grasp how to use technology, since to us, it seems so simple. In reality, they were not trained to live in a world centered around technology, and it is essentially a foreign language to them. I started my social media journey by creating my Facebook profile upon the age of ten. Ever since then, my online footprint continued to grow throughout the years as I created profiles on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Vine, and more. I use these applications to follow and stay connected with friends and mutual friends of mine, send updates and pictures to the people close to me, and look at posts and videos that make me laugh. If somebody happened to stumble across my social media platforms, they would be able to see the general area I live in, go to school in, the people I surround myself with, and the many activities I like to do and take pictures of. As much as I like to post about my life, I am aware that there are people in the world who find people's social media pages and use the information that they see for the wrong reasons, even if they do not personally know the person they are looking at. For this reason, I take precautions and keep my profiles private, ensuring that I can regulate who can and cannot look at my posts. I have given these social media platforms my email and my phone number in case any of my accounts are hacked into or I am logged out for any reason and cannot log back in. These platforms do not have permission to share my phone number or email with anybody. At the end of the day, as much as I do put effort into my online profiles and spend a good amount of time on my smartphone and laptop, the time I enjoy most is the time spent face to face with the people I love. Staring at a screen can cause people to compare themselves to the other people they find online, make them feel lonely and isolated, and take away from the life pleasures we were placed on Earth to enjoy.