Today I logged all the interactions I had on the internet. It is amazing how many times I used it for educational, personal, and social reasons. Seeing the total interaction numbers in black and white is almost unbelievable. It’s hard to imagine life without the internet when I touch it roughly 40 times a day.
I manage my educational life through Canvas which lists all of my classes, assignments and grades. I use this source the most of any, outside of social media. I referred back to Canvas six times today, looking back at particular assignment instructions. Also, in the educational area, was Google search. I was writing a paper on “otherness” and how it affected the case of the Central Park 5 for my writing seminar. Google helped me locate numerous articles on the case and gave me good details of the case that I needed. The last part of the educational internet for the day was using video conferencing (Zoom) for my two online classes. After doing my schoolwork on the internet, I reflected back to an article we read about Digital Redlining. I now realize the benefits and privilege with this access that I have that aren’t available to everyone. https://www.commonsense.org/education/articles/digital-redlining-access-and-privacy
On the communications side of things, I spent a lot of time on Snapchat catching up with my high school friend group that are currently attending other schools. We share pictures and stories of what is happening on each campus. It is incredible to see the difference in how things are run, in the time of COVID, on the campus of state schools versus a small school like W&L. The state schools are having massive parties often and consequently big outbreaks of the virus are ensuing.
Instagram is probably where I spend most my time and it is for personal fulfillment. I get immediate gratification seeing stories on what friends are doing in their new environments. I also used different apps like AJGA Sports to follow the scoring of a junior golf tournament, ESPN’s app to get me up to date on what is happening in the world of college football, and USA Today app to check out the national news scene, including the rioting in Portland.
There are huge advantages to having information at your fingertips, especially when it comes to research for schoolwork. I think the downside is that there is a lot of false information floating around and you must be careful to use legitimate sources. It’s crazy to think how hard it was to research things prior to the internet. It’s incredibly powerful to have it available now and I’m not sure my generation can really fully appreciate it.
I also think the social apps have benefits. Its nice to stay connected with people close to you and these apps make it super easy to do so. However, I also think there are big downsides to these apps. First, it is tremendously time consuming to stay up to date with everyone and if you are not constantly checking, you feel as though you are missing out. This makes it extremely hard to enjoy the time and place you are currently in and when starting a new chapter in life.
