Blog #11

I decided to "unplug" for a little over a half a day last Saturday, and it felt great. I honestly don't feel like I use technology all that much, but then again I certainly rely on it more than I'd like to admit. I am not on my phone as much as my peers, but I realized the technology I prefer using the most is television and video games. It was pretty easy to avoid these temptations as I decided to leave my dorm and get outdoors. I went to my sister's house in Shelby County and spent time with my nephews, we went fishing, frog gigging, and played several different sports with them. I found staying away from technology fairly easy, even though we finished the night watching the NBA playoffs together. My nephews are young and don't have phones yet, and not a whole bunch of access to technology so I wasn't "phubbed" by them. I try to not "phub" others, and my friends and we typically agree to put our phones away when we hang out. I hate when people "phub" me, it makes me feel unimportant and ignored, so I try my best not to "phub" other people, but my achilles heel is sports applications on my phone. I love reading articles about any kind of sports topic you could think of, and I can never get enough of it, so if I ever "phub" anyone it's because of that, and I'm pretty aware so I try to keep that to a minimum, even though I'm not always flawless.

Something that really impacted me in this class was critically thinking about social media. Our last blog entry had me dig deep into social media, how I really felt about it, and how it impacts people. This course, coupled with my own research has lead me to cut way back on my social media, and even delete an amount of it. I learned many things in this course I won't forget, but I believe the impact it had on me in terms of social media are the most impactful, and will stick with me the longest.