Muriel Jones

Mass Media and Collective Consciousness

20 Feb. 2025

Experiential Reflective Essay #1: Technology Reflection

The alarm goes off signaling the start of my day; I climb out of bed and grab my phone off the

desk opening it to see what notifications I received overnight and check the weather for the day.

After a few minutes of swiping through the many notifications and not actually paying attention

to any of them, I get dressed and prepare myself for the day. I'm the only person from my cross-

country team in the cafeteria this early in the morning, so as I eat my breakfast, I pull out my

phone to play a game, watch a few videos, or read a book to pass the time. On my way to my

first class I feel my phone vibrate and immediately pull it out to see what it is. It is a spam email

notification, so I swipe out of it and put my phone back in my pocket. During class I see many of

my peers watching reels or playing games on their phones while the professor teaches us. I

wonder how they can do this and still retain what the professor is teaching. Between classes, I

find a quiet space to study and do homework. After about half an hour, however, I start to get

distracted watching YouTube videos or playing games on my phone. Later, at practice, I find my

teammates laughing and joking, discussing their days and the latest trends on TikTok. As we run

we listen to music from someone's speaker. After practice I head home where I hope to do more

studying, but my roommate asks me if I want to watch a movie. Being a movie lover, I can't say

no, and I settle in to watch. Later that night, as I climb back into bed, I check my phone one last

time to see if any more notifications have come in, then turn off the light and close my eyes.

I didn't realize just how much I let technology run my life until I spent the last month

paying more attention to my technology use. I am on my phone, tablet, or computer almost

constantly, and I am not always using these devices productively. I found over the past month
that I seem to follow a very short cycle as far as my time spent on YouTube, watching movies, or

playing games. At the start of the semester I was just coming out of the cycle and spending less

time doing these activities. I spent the first two weeks of classes fairly productively and rarely

used technology if it wasn't to do homework or study. I felt happy, productive, and stimulated

most of the time during these weeks. The third week of the semester I started spending a little

more time doing these activities once more, and as a consequence felt a little more distracted and

stressed. The fourth week of the semester, I spent nearly all my free time on YouTube, watching

movies, or playing games. This week I felt very frustrated with myself, distracted, stressed, and

anxious. Recognizing this cycle made me want to improve and stop the cycle all together or at

least make it take longer before it comes back around. These activities are those that seem to

control my life; however, there are other common uses of technology that I rarely participate in

and thus do not have much of a hold on my daily activity.

Messaging and calling friends and family is perhaps the most prominent use of

technology that has no hold on my day-to-day activity. My family members and friends are

constantly bugging me because I haven't responded to them after several days. I love the idea of

messaging and calling in order to stay connected with friends and family, but I do not

particularly enjoy typing out messages or finding time to call up a friend. Because of this, I often

don't even look at the messaging apps on my phone for several days at a time. Nevertheless, I

want to change this habit to spend a little more time each day sending and responding to

messages as I like being able to feel connected to my friends and family that live far away. The

times that I have spent a little time each day to connect with my friends, I have felt very happy,

and this has led to greater productivity in my other endeavors. On the other hand, I have noticed

that many people have the opposite occur when messaging friends and family and spend too

much time doing so causing them to be unproductive.

that social media, videos, and games are also very commonly used by all my peers. It intrigues

me that we can be in a large group of people or a small group of friends and often there is silence

as most are absorbed in their phones or tablets. Even when there is conversation, I notice that

many are only half present as they check their devices with each new notification. This

observation led me to realize that I am not the only person that struggles to not let technology

dominate my life.

I asked several of my teammates how they see their technology use, and most said they

were on their phones way too often and wanted to change their habits as well. I was impressed

by some of the measures some of them had taken to be able to regulate their technology use.

Some said they don't take their phones out at practice, on trips, or during classes, which I really

liked as it allows for the opportunity to have interactions face-to-face. Another suggestion that I

will definitely apply was that some of them have specific places to use different types of

technology and media. As a result, they would do most of their homework in the library where

they didn't allow themselves to get on social media, and at home would relax and spend as much

time as they wanted on social media or playing games. These methods of regulating technology

use are things that I will likely incorporate in order to be able to better control my time and use

of technology.

The observation and reflections that I have made over the past month have opened my

eyes to the grip that technology has on each and every one of us. I was honestly surprised to find

that I used it so much, and ashamed to admit that much of my technology use was not

particularly planned or productive. I hope to take what I have learned over this last month and

use this knowledge to improve my use of technology. Technology can be a wonderful tool or a

horrible trap; I choose to make it a tool.