In our world today, stories about youth getting addicted to drugs is already a cliché. That is why I am not going to write about drug addiction in this entry. Instead, I am going to write about something we can all relate to, especially the youth of the 21st century. I am going to talk about a true story – the story of the youth in this technological era.
For the past few years, different devices like laptops and cellphones are getting cheaper than ever. This made technology even more accessible to most of the people, especially the youth. Today, the youth owned, used and ruled each and every kind of gadgets from a cellphone to a PC. Even a 3 year-old kid knows how to open a tablet and use applications in it even without the supervision of an adult. In line with improving our technology, we also developed a new way to talk to each other. We are all guilty of committing the same kind of addiction – the addiction of using the different gadgets of this high-tech era in conversing with one another. To put it in layman’s term, we are guilty of being hooked to social media. If you are not addicted to social media, then you must be living in a different world.
For this entry, I am going to use a video produced by my group in a project for a Filipino subject in our school. The video is entitled “Hashtag Lasalle: Ang Social Media sa Pag-aaral ng mga Lasalyano.” In this documentary, we focused on the causes of Social Media addiction and the effects of this addiction in the academic performances of Lasallians. We interviewed and surveyed different students from different colleges in the university to tell us their side of the story regarding this matter. We asked some university student body officials to tell us the advantages of using social media in communicating with the whole academic community. A professor from the university also gave us the pros and cons of using social media in teaching. We also interviewed a counselor in our school to find ways on how to get rid of this addiction.
In the video, most of the students agreed on one thing – social media can be a very convenient tool for learning but it can also destroy your academic enthusiasm. One of the most obvious use of social media is communication. Communication, in our modern time, was changed a lot by the internet and social media. Now, we often use social media to communicate than talking to the other person face-to-face. In this internet-driven age, students enjoy doing collaborative projects online. This can be very helpful if you and your group mates live very far from each other. You can use the power of social media to communicate with each other. On the other hand, it can destroy your concentration on the project by tempting you to do other things on the net. This happens to me all the time. I will open Facebook to chat with my group mates about the project, but I will end up browsing my news feed. This is also true whenever I am browsing the internet to do my assignment. I always end up using Facebook and Twitter.
Back when I was in 1st year high school, I bought my own pocket broadband. Yes, I spent my money to have my own internet connection. I have to reload it every single time just to use it. Back then, I have to save money from my allowance to be able to do my assignments using the internet. I also have to manage my time to do all the things I need because the load for the internet connection is limited. In short, I bought the pocket broadband to help me in my academic life. If you will ask my father regarding the use of social media in academics, he will say that it is very inappropriate and unnecessary. Why? He always claimed that during his time as a student, he did not use any of that social media to plan on group projects. Instead, they always plan their project by talking to each other personally. This gave me the idea that the youth today might be too lazy to plan the project using the traditional way. I think we might be relying too much on the use of these social media to procrastinate our way to our academic endeavors. Yes, I used the word procrastination because it is the trending attitude of the youth today. During the time of our parents, they plan ahead to finish the project on time. On the other hand, we always enjoy our time using social media instead of doing our projects through the help of internet.
I might not be addicted to cigarettes, beers and other manly vices, but I have to admit that I am truly addicted to social media and the whole of the internet. We all have to agree and admit to ourselves that all of us have this craving for the internet. A few years ago, I declared that social media is just for bored people in the net and I promised not to be addicted to it. But I ate up all those words and found myself spending a lot of time using it. Maybe the best reason for my addiction is my ‘lack of social life’ as stated in the video. Many of us uses social media to express our ideas because of the freedom that it gives. For introverts like me, it gives us the freedom to speak of what we believe in without personally talking to others.
Addiction to social media is not very harmful, if you know how to control your actions. It is even better than being addicted to cigarettes, liquors and other bad vices. Using the internet and social media also yields positive things, especially in academics, if you will utilize it properly. Knowing your self means knowing all the things about yourself, including the things that you are hooked to. If you are aware of all of your cravings, you also know how to control and deal with it. If you know how to control it, you can say that you are addicted and you know it.
