When I began this class, we were asked a question about our personal experiences of connection with communication technology. As I really started to think about my personal experience of a complicated relationship with one’s personal devices, one word came to mind: “reliance”. I can’t point to an exact moment when I really began to understand the hold my phone has on me until we started observing our habits, objects, and tools of communication through this class. Furthering my curiosity, I learned more about what dependency, identity, and how others’ experiences have to do with the overall feeling of being reliant towards personal technology.
My weekly screen time notification came across my screen early one Sunday morning; A huge 6h 45m shines up at my face and (as seen in figure 1) and my total weekly time was 47h 17m. I thought to myself, “No! This can’t be right! There’s no way my screen is telling me that this is true”. I double checked and, yes it really was true. This is what “reliance” looks like for me. My identity was now completely wrapped up and solely dependent on my phone. I have officially become reliant on my phone. What’s worse is I’ve become reliant on the social media aspect of my phone. How did this happen to me? I had a full childhood of playing outside, using my imagination. I was never handed an iPad to be quiet or to keep me busy so my parents could get things done. I distinctly remember my parents waiting to give me my first phone. When they finally did, I felt on top of the world, like I was the luckiest middle schooler ever. With my new phone came new responsibilities, but not responsibilities from my parents, rather new social aspects I was now responsible for.
Social media was the most respective form of communication for my middle school self. Whether it was getting the perfect pose for my Instagram posts, sending my daily snaps to my friends, or pinning my dream life on Pinterest. I was creating habits, not necessarily good ones, just to feel connected in the social media world. I was beginning to create my online identity. The more connected I felt, the more I started to chain myself to this device that I held in my hand. As seen in figure 2, my reliance on social media has only grown since starting these bad habits in middle school. My Tik Tok is up to a ridiculously high, 15h and 16m per week total and my Snapchat use is now at 6h and 54m a week. Looking back, my middle school self couldn’t have imagined my old habits to have grown into these new, honestly, embarrassing habits. My connection to my phone has only grown. With each new notification I would receive, the deeper my phone was pulling me into the new world of social media. The more I began to understand this habit of feeling responsible for my social media presence, only then did I begin to realize that this is a normal occurrence for young adults my age. According to an article from the ScienceDirect Academic Journal, I’ve learned that “individuals rely on technology rather than other people for information, they may miss out on opportunities to satisfy fundamental human needs” (Kushlev, 2017). This means that the habits I was creating through technology were replacing my human social needs, such as having face-to-face contact and in person communication with my friends and family. While I may not have realized at the moment the opportunities I’ve missed out on, it has now painfully started to spill out into my daily routine of relying on technology for the social needs I’ve missed in my everyday life, due to replacing it with the phone in my hand.
The default alarm sound blares from my nightstand. I look over and see it’s 7:00 a.m. on the dot reading across my clock. I reached out my hand, trying to find my phone to stop the horrid sound coming from the phone. As I lay in bed, squinting at the phone I now hold in my hand, a brightly lit screen shining back at me, I start mindlessly scrolling through TikTok and responding to unopened snapchats from last night until my alarm comes back on, warning me I need to get out of bed. Now, as my third alarm screams at me, I roll myself out of bed, phone gripped tightly in my hand. I somehow get dressed, do my hair and make it out of the house in time for my job. I sit in my car waiting for it to heat up and connect my phone to my Apple car play, so I have something to listen to on the way to work. When I make it to work, where I nanny a one-year-old named Ella, while she does her own thing until she needs me, I scroll through my Instagram, and snap the few friends who are awake. After work, it’s about 11 am as I head to my car. I connect my phone again, turn on the GPS to check the traffic going north on the way to school (there is, of course) and turn on my favorite music to make the traffic bearable. I’m surprisingly early to class, so of course now I have time to kill. What better way to kill time than to sit in the chair outside my class aimlessly scrolling through TikTok.
Once I’m finally heading back home from class, I don’t plug in my GPS since I don’t want to see the traffic ahead. I do play “Smartless” which is my favorite playlist for long drives. With the background noise from my stereo, I sit in traffic and get multiple buzzes from my phone the whole ride home reminding me of the responsibilities I have to uphold for my friends and family. The buzzing continues the whole ride home, with each buzz, my anxiety continues to grow immensely, and I resist the urge to check my phone until I’ve stopped completely and am out of the car. Finally, being able to have full access to my phone, I walk into the house, eyes still glued to the phone as my dad asks: “Are you up to watch something tonight?” I look down at my phone, back at him, take a deep breath, smile and say “Sure!”. I’m exhausted and just want to lay down and hide in my phone, while eventually falling asleep. I know this is the only way I’ll spend time with him. Connected by the tv screen we sit in silence as the noise from the TV sets the mood and me and my dads’ faces are lit up by our individual devices. The clock hits 11 pm. We call it night. As I lay in bed, exhausted, knowing I need to turn my phone off and go to bed, but still doom scrolling through all my connected social medias until my brain can no longer take anymore, I turn my alarms on for the next day, roll over and prepare to do it all over again in the morning.
In a MIT published article by Susan Herring (2008) she explains “life of digital technologies and practices such as computer-mediated communication and entertainment information on-demand may serve to naturalize them in ways that produce subtle social and cognitive effects.” (Herring, 71). In this short sentence she explains why I am so utterly dependent and connected to these social apps. It’s an on-demand world that can have everything I need; Socializing? Check! Entertainment? Check! Information at one’s fingertips? Check! Why wouldn’t I and other young adults rely on our social communication devices when they can do everything for us? But this is the mindset I’m trying to break. Why do I need to have everything on demand all the time? In the next few weeks, I tried to implement new habits. I tried to break the ones that I had started in middle school, and to stop the habit of dependency. I put screen time limits on Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram. The screen time limit was an idea I had found from a CNBC article which explained the ways you can decrease the amount of time spent on your personal phone “so that you can set a specific usage goal and see how well you stick to it” (D’Onfro, 2018). One hour is what I gave myself for each app, as seen in figure 4. The first day with the limits on my phone, I noticed that I had used up my allotted hour of Tik Tok by 10 AM. I started on my Instagram allotment, using it as a replacement for TikTok to occupy my empty brain. I didn’t end up using the full hour for Snapchat, which surprised me. Over the next few days, I started feeling annoyed with the “time limit” alert popping up on my favorite apps, choosing to continue to click “remind me in 15 minutes” instead of using it to take a step back and do something different. As I observed this annoying feeling, I started to think that it was because it’s so easy to occupy your brain with something so trivial, and easily accessible. The time limit instead, was a reminder of something that requires you to think and to be a part of the real world. While trying to break away from this codependent relationship I seemed to possess with my phone, I realized the power does not lie with the phone itself but the social apps that seem to consume my life.
On a previous workshop project in Writing 101, I created a podcast called “Feeling Reliant Towards Technology, a Generational Thing”. In figure 3, you can view the professional cover for this podcast episode. In this episode I talk with my dad, David Myers, to try to deeply understand the generational divide and to see what feelings we have in common around technology in our lives. I asked him about why he feels the need to not only watch TV every night but why we have to also sit on our phones and play mindless games and scroll on social media apps while we watch. He explained that we live in an over stimulating world and when one stimulus goes away, we need something to fill that with our phones. I think to myself, why do I continue to scroll on my phone while my TV is showing me new and exciting things to pay attention to. He also explained that he too feels a sense of reliance on his phone. Even though he did not grow up with the same access to technology, he got to see firsthand how it completely formed into what it is now. Dave is a high school principal and he talked to me about how even in the workplace how reliant he feels towards his computer or phone. He feels he can’t escape the reliance or dependency no matter the place he is at. After talking to Dave, I realized that whether you are a teen or a middle-aged person, we are all being affected by this growing technology, and we have a lot of similar feelings of reliance or dependency.
When someone asks me about my personal experiences of connection with technology, I won’t tell them I’m perfectly fine with the way I interact with my personal technology or with my phone. Instead, I’ll explain how I have grown up in this technological age. How I learned how to socialize through the apps I’ve been given, how I’ve tried to improve my feelings towards my phone, and finally, how I am a hundred percent “reliant” on my phone. With my phone at my fingertips, the way its intertwined with the way I identify myself, and how hard it is to step away from the stimulating world inside your phone, I think others will be able to deeply understand how through my experiences I have a complicated, co-dependent, and all-consuming connection with my phone, or my personal technology device. I think others will be able to really connect with the understanding of the essay as we all experience some form of reliance on the technology around us, no matter the age.
Figures
References
D’Onfro, J. (2018, January 10). These simple steps will help you stop checking your phone so much. CNBC. Retrieved February 28, 2023, from https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/03/how-to-curb-you-smartphone-addiction-in-2018.html
Herring, Susan C. (2008) “Questioning the Generational Divide: Technological Exoticism and Adult Constructions of Online Youth Identity.” Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Edited by David Buckingham. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. 71–92. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262524834.071. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=eb4331c2f310dfff3ba5ac86b82c5ec90902c492
Kushlev, K., Proulx, J. D. E., & Dunn, E. W. (2017). Digitally connected, socially disconnected: The effects of relying on technology rather than other people. Computers in Human Behavior, 76, 68–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.07.001
TAYLOR TALKS A LOT …(podcast) (2023) Myers, Taylor “feeling reliant towards technology, a generational thing” produced and written by Taylor Myers. Music by Steven Beddall “Taste of freedom”. This is “Taylor Talks A Lot…”feeling reliant towards technology, a generational thing
References Kushlev, K., Proulx, J. D. E., & Dunn, E. W. (2017, November). Digitally connected, socially disconnected: The effects of relying on technology rather than other people. Shibboleth authentication request. Retrieved February 28, 2023, from https://www-sciencedirect-com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/science/article/pii/S0747563217304132 TAYLOR TALKS A LOT …(podcast) (2023) Myers, Taylor “feeling reliant towards technology, a generational thing” produced and written by Taylor Myers. Music by Steven Beddall “Taste of freedom”. This is “Taylor Talks A Lot…”feeling reliant towards technology, a generational thing Links to an external site. Herring, Susan C.(2008) “Questioning the Generational Divide: Technological Exoticism and Adult Constructions of Online Youth Identity." Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Edited by David Buckingham. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. 71–92. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262524834.071https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=eb4331c2f310dfff3ba5ac86b82c5ec90902c492 D’Onfro, J. (2018, January 10). These simple steps will help you stop checking your phone so much. CNBC. Retrieved February 28, 2023, from https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/03/how-to-curb-you-smartphone-addiction-in-2018.html
