Daily Digital Dependency
I wake up to the sound of my alarm which I set through the “bedtime” app on my phone. I pick up my phone before I even turn on a light or put on my glasses and scroll through my social media feeds for at least 10 minutes with one eye open and the other closed and still pressed against my pillow. After wasting a sufficient amount of time aimlessly scrolling through my phone I get up, wash my face with my Clarisonic cleansing brush, and brushing my teeth for 4 minutes with my electric toothbrush. Within the first 20 minutes of making up I am already exposed to huge technology. Making an already easy life, even easier.
Following this I continue my morning drowning in technology. By 9am I scan in to the lecture with my smartcard, pull up the slides on my tablet and follow the projector to the second. If I hadn’t already met up with my girlfriends I text them or location share to make sure we see each other after the lecture. We go to get coffee out of the self-service machine using our smartcards to pay with invisible money again. When we finish a day of college I normally go to work, I check the due time on my phone through an app and then jump on the next one into town. I swipe on with my leapcard, put in my headphones and head to work.
Unsurprisingly technology embedded throughout all aspects of work life. I work in retail and know for a fact that our whole system won’t function without technology and suffers greatly when our internet connection is weak. Our tills are all electronic, we use security radios, stock check scanners, electronic card payment systems and independent air conditioning systems. These are just an example of the digitally dependent system in my workplace. Finally after work I head home. For the purpose of this blog I observed closely how much technology I was exposed to on a daily basis and the amount that I realized surrounded me was extraordinary and provoked me to want to do a tech detox.
I began to explore the relationship between over exposure to technology and different aspects of our lives. All the way from psychological to physiological. Although this is my current routine and the levels of technology exposure remains constant enough, it hasn’t been like this all my life. I feel like this just confirms further the idea of how much rapidly developing technology is effecting our lives. Whether that affect be good, bad or indifferent.
