Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Participating in the Always-On Lifestyle

Chapter 6 talks about Danah Boyd’s personal experience in “participating in the always on lifestyle” and she shares her perspective, and she also provides a defense, on living on the “always on” lifestyle.  Boyd starts off by saying she love doing surveys but is always confused when she is asked how many hours she spends daily on the Internet.  I think it is pretty sad that she is basically only off the Internet while she is sleeping or showering because she is always connected through her phone. 

Boyd’s first statement is that “it’s no longer about on or off” (p. 71), because she says that “always on” does not necessarily that a person is on their digital device, but because of today’s technology, the “online is just around the corner” (p. 71).  Boyd also states that in order to maintain a healthy balance in interacting with life on and off-line, people need to have self-discipline and find a balance. 

Technology can be very effective to communicate with others.  People now use things such as blogs to illustrate and relate your personal experience with others who can relate.
The problem today with our society is not that we have not immersed ourselves in the new society; the problem is that we have basically become lost in this society.    

So first off I did not know what #FOMO was until I searched it on instagram.  I have to say that it is pretty sad that people have a fear of missing out and realistically this “fear” is absurd to me.  The reason being is because you will never be able to do everything all at once therefore, you will always be missing out on something.  Many of the instagram pictures I saw were picture of companies advertising their merchandise.  For example this picture is talking about how they are already sold out of the product but if you have the fear of missing out you can sign up for the future product so that you wont miss out. Companies such as there are profiting big time on the fact that people want the new stuff and for some reason they feel like they have to have it.

Also, they have made new emoticons so that people can better express their fear of missing out.  This is what has become of our society … not only technology but materialistic things too. 

As for searching @snoopdogg, I found the usual which includes his lifestyle of smoking weed and showing his colors, which are affiliated with the Crips: and him making fun of others.  The only thing I agreed on with Snoop was this:
A photo posted by snoopdogg (@snoopdogg) on

Snoop tells the truth here about how our society is today.  Today we are more concerned about Bruce Jenner and his transition to becoming a woman.  While he is not the first to do this, it has become an attention-grabbing story because of his association with the Kardashian family.  I wonder if he was not associated with Kim, Khloe, or any Kardashian for that matter, would it be such a big story or would society just be like, “good for him,” and move on?  Another thing that bothers me about this is the fact that the Arthur Ashe Courage Award will be awarded to Caitlyn Jenner and not someone like Akon who is helping many under privileged people or Noah Galloway.

Finally, I would like to point out that I am no different than anyone involve with social media.  I think that I am on my phone way too much.  I have noticed this thanks to my husband who points it out.  I have tried to get better at this and I will allow my phone to die on purpose or I will sometimes put it on silent and just leave it on my nightstand.  Growing up I did not have a phone or Internet handy.  I got my first phone when I joined the Army in 2005 and even then all of the social media stuff was really hard to look at on the screen of the flip phone (razor to be exact).  It wasn’t until my husband was deployed that I became really addicted to having my phone on me at all times.  During his deployment, communication was very limited and I always had my phone on me to make sure that I never missed a call from him.  This went on for a year and once my husband returned home I was so used to having my phone on me that it felt strange if I didn’t have it.  One would think having my husband home would have taken this habit away, but it did not.  I have gotten better and I have made it a point to remind myself to put my phone down and just interact with the people around me.  Although, when I want to be “alone” I do get on my phone, so this kind-of defeats the purpose of being alone.  I hope that as a society we get better at balancing our technological time and our face-to-face interaction time.  I definitely do not want my boys to grow up with a phone glued to their hands.

I leave you all with this ;)

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