Me and the Web

 

The World Wide Web and I

    When thinking about how I interact with the web I started to look at just how much I use all the different forms of social media. I was shocked to find just how much time I waste scrolling through the likes of Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube. In the past week alone I spent a combined 52 hours on all these apps alone. 40 of those hours were spent watching videos on Youtube, seven hours coming from scrolling through Instagram and five hours coming from scrolling through Twitter. My youtube watch time alone eclipsed two full days of videos which is a staggering thing to think about. After this revelation I started to think about just how much time these platforms take up and how to be able to stop myself from continuing this trend. It seemed like the 52 hours of that week didn't mean much to past me, but to present me, that time could have been used for more productive activities.  

    Now when looking at my digital footprint, despite all the time I spend on social media, it isn't all that big. I only have about eight or nine posts on my instagram and one or two tweets on my twitter. Of course my footprint has grown since I have retweeted and liked posts on both platforms, but it realistically doesn't amount to much. The one place I used to have a bigger footprint was Youtube. When I was younger I made a Youtube channel because every kid wanted to be the next big Youtuber and I was no exception. I started with a channel with a childhood friend where we made Minecraft tutorials. It was about what you would expect from a 10 year old making videos on a macbook. After talking it over with each other, we decided to delete the channel since we didn't want people finding it when we were older. This would lead the way to my second youtube channel, another Minecraft channel with a different friend of mine. Being about 12 now, the videos were just as bad as the others, but we didn't delete this channel. We ended up privatizing the videos on this channel for the same reason as the last time.

    Both times me and my friends agreed that we had to either delete the channel or privatize the video in order to make sure we didn't have it haunting us when we were older. We fixed that part of our digital footprint. I have had to fix my digital footprint here and there, one example is my instagram. There was nothing bad on it, I just had old picture of myself when I was younger and I did not feel as though my page needed them. There were also some cringe worthy pictures where I would make a joke about stupid photos I took, I didn't want these on my digital footprint. When it comes to twitter I ended up having my first account hacked and the hacker was retweeting some less then favorable things. When I ended up getting my account back I deleted it from existence, changing the @ tag and everything. I have a different twitter now and I am incredibly happy I haven't had to deal with something like that again.

    Now when speaking on the balance between the wonders of technology and the darker side that comes along with it, I think there is a balance. While the world of technology is forever changing and upgrading the very machines and devices we use every day, there also comes a more harsh reality. When the internet was invented it was supposed to be a revolutionary piece of technology and it was. Google, Youtube, Facebook, etc. all blasted onto the scene changing the internet in their wakes. However there is a dark side to the internet, something that is more beneath the surface. For as much good that the internet and other forms of social media has done, the dark web and pages within those social media sites leave a scar on the internet. The dark web is a vast network of illegal sites that need a special browser in order to access them. It is also filled with traps, viruses, and hordes of illegal activities which is why it is used by criminals. The world of technology is a Ying and Yang relationship, one cannot exist without the other. There is good in the bad and bad in the good and all together then exist completely separate from each other.