My Online Life

There are many ways that technology and the Internet have affected my life. One of these major ways is that I always have a sense of connectedness. I feel especially connected with my family and friends; at a moment’s notice, I can relay information to a number of people and gain information about what they are doing or feeling through the use of social media. I also feel more connected to the world, and this aids me in finding solutions to problems, in finding information that I need or want, and in finding anything and everything that is asked of me. I argue that digital technologies have changed who I am over the course of its existence with me. I do find myself checking multiple things on my phone. I also have multiple devices that I check at the same time. I learned these new forms of digital media as they were introduced into society. For these reasons, I would consider myself Marc Prensky’s digital native. I used to program on an apple computer possibly before the Macintosh was introduced. I learned how to use a typewriter simultaneously to learning how to write with a pencil. I still remember the day that computers were introduced to my fourth-grade class.

The two documentaries, Rachel Dretzin’s Growing Up Online and Douglas Rushkoff and Rachel Dretzin’s Digital Nation, raise a lot of questions, especially some pertaining to those growing up as a digital native. I especially liked the idea that, somewhere along the way, there was a shift in ownership of the Internet from adults to teenagers. Teenagers have changed digital media to something that is a part of our everyday lives. In today’s society, you need to have the Internet on to talk to friends or else you cease to be in the loop; Digital Nation alludes to this theme with the idea that we have to keep up or we get left behind.

The education system has to be interactive in order for these new “humans” to learn; I honestly don’t believe that the traditional method of teaching will work, especially if digital media is taken out of the classroom. Yes, the educators need to cut through media and get their students’ attention to be a successful educator. Even there are more students who struggle with the ability to focus than there were thirty years ago, these students can accomplish working tasks that would take workers with years of experience twice as long to accomplish; in this sense, teaching students to multitask is important for their future jobs. I can sympathize with the motion to teach children how to use digital media; then, may be instant gratification would not be seen as negative. Teachers need to know how to use digital media and navigate the attention span of the student towards that digital media.

Digital media sites are what we think of as adolescent’s identities. It is a place for them to try things out. It’s harder to get into their personal belongings online than they were to get them offline. Another idea that resonated with me was the fact that teenagers ask, “Why tell my parents when I have the whole world to talk to?” With teenagers thinking this way, I don’t believe that neuroscience is the best way to figure out what is going on with individuals who multitask and digital media users. Figuring this out would also require scholars to determine the definitions of both multitask and distraction. However, I do agree that we should all be asking, “What is technology doing to us?”