The Digital World

Remember When...

I remember watching my parents plan their finances when I was young. They would pull out a calculator, a spiral notebook, and a black zipper bag that held their cashed paychecks. They would count out the bills and place money on top of different envelopes signifying which money went where. I remember thinking what would happen if a payment got lost in the mail? This whole system stressed me out as a child, but it felt perfectly natural to them. Now, I cannot imagine paying my bills in physical cash instead of my online transactions. Technology has paved the way for much easier and seemingly safer shopping and bill-paying options. Gone are the days of changing the location of the money pouch, my parents have thankfully switched over to only online banking, and gone are the days of nervously waiting to see if the snail mail payment made it through safely. We are now in the age of digital!

My Digital Map

Image Source: Author Image created with Canva

Using David White's terminology “Visitors and Residents,” I have broken up the applications I use daily on my phone into the following: visitor, resident, professional, and personal. From here it was rather easy to choose which applications belong to professional and personal, the latter being the majority. What was more difficult was deciding whether certain apps belonged to visitor or resident based off of the White's qualifications. Which apps did I spend the most time on? Which apps am I an active participant in?

Visitor

One element I had to consider was how much I leave behind once I have closed an app. Were there blog posts, photos, and comments that others can look to once I have taken my leave? If the answer is no, then it would appear I am a mere visitor of those apps. As the main caretaker of my household's finances, I have every money storing/exchanging app as well as every utility application that I pay bills to. While I do have a profile for those apps, I do not do anything besides store money and make transactions on them. Therefore, they stay on the visitor side of the map. When it came to where I would watch media such as Crunchyroll, Netflix, and YouTube while I do have personal accounts, it is not a medium where I leave comments or make public posts. Moving on to apps like X, Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest, and Reddit I do have an account however, I do not contribute anything to those accounts. I use them solely for looking at other people's art, videos, Memes, and so on. My profile has nothing saved to them other than the occasional "like." As someone who does not like having personal identifying information out there, I try to keep my government name and personal pictures off of the internet. I know that my digital footprint does exist out there however, I will continue to do what I can to shrink that footprint. 

Resident

Remember what I just said about trying to keep my digital footprint small? This is where I say something to completely counteract that. When it comes to apps like Snapchat, Discord, Goodreads, and TikTok I am completely in resident-ville. I use these applications daily, for hours on end. Every morning on my way to work I send my friends a "Good morning" snap on Snapchat, usually of an extremely close-up and unflattering picture of my face. Next, when I am on the bus, I open up Discord and check on my various servers. I go through the 10 Discord servers I am a part of, respond to friends, like photos and comments, and then periodically check it throughout the day. Next is the app where I spend the majority of my time, TikTok. I can spend hours upon hours on TikTok, liking videos, posting comments, and sending my closest friends dozens of videos a day. In every group chat, you can find videos I have sent, as well as the pleas of my loved ones to let them catch up on the last batch I sent before I send them more. No day can be completed without an hour or two playing Pokémon Go. As an everyday user, my Pokémon Go is spent during my morning commute to work in which I will send postcards, catch Pokémon, and battle in Pokémon raids. As a big reader, I spend the majority of my lunch break and commute home reading using my Kindle and Libby app. I think fondly of my days in middle school and high school when I would travel with a minimum of three books in my bag to read depending on what mood I was in. I wish I could go back and tell my younger self the reason you have neck and shoulder pain is because of that 1248-page, hardcover, one-volume edition of The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien you insist on carrying in your flimsy messenger bag every school day. Plus, I am a slow reader so I was carrying that volume around for months. If only I had had a Kindle back then, just maybe I could have saved myself some pain. 

Any Surprises Along the Way?

One thing is for certain, I do not use my phone for professional work. The few applications I have stored on my phone range from Google Workspace to Zoom. While do enjoy my professional career, once I leave for the day I am gone both physically and mentally. I do not like to keep things on my phone that I would not use personally as well. When going through my phone I was surprised at the amount of apps that I stored on there where I could not remember the last time I opened them. Apps like TikTok and Spotify that I use every day make sense, but I found Poshmark saved on my phone even though I have never used it. If I were to guess, a friend or family member most likely recommended it to me and I downloaded it to show I took their recommendations seriously. 

Image Source: Personal Photo from my iPhone's Screen Time

After completing this blog post, I will be taking time to clear out my phone of anything I have not opened in the past month. As well as setting up some screen time limiters for myself. I went through my screen time on my phone and found that in the past four days, I have spent a total of 8 hours and 18 minutes on TikTok. This was both shocking and expected information. I have realized that I have come to rely on my phone a bit too much for personal entertainment and while that in itself is not a bad thing, I would like to give my eyes some much-needed respite. 


References

https://daveowhite.com/vandr/




Comments

  1. NMZumpanoSeptember 14, 2024 at 7:21 AM

    Similar to your Poshmark app as I was reading thing I thought to myself, "oh yeah- I still have that Discord account" lol. It's fascinating how much we have out there that we forget about until we see it on paper (or on our phones). Great idea on cleaning out the apps- the beauty of it is that you can always reinstall them if needed. Thanks for the great reflection- good luck limiting TikTok!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mary MckenzieOctober 15, 2024 at 7:00 PM

    Neko Atsume!!! :3

    ReplyDelete

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