Enter the Cyborg
Hi, I was born in the year 2000 — the year of the first generation of cyborgs. Y2K wasn’t a hoax ladies and gentlemen. I grew up with the first wave of kids who would have smart phones as an intergral part of their lives since middle school. “Integral” may be downplaying the severity of how addicted we truly are. It would be more accurate to say that we and our phones are inseperable. I’m writing on Medium in order to share my story, which is probably identical to what children these days are going through. I’m writing to spread awareness about how terrible unrestricted social media use can be for anyone’s mental health. Ever since I was 11 years old my brain has been exposed to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, you name it! From what I hear, middleschool and highschool were bad enough prior to the introduction of social media but no one really had any clue how it would influence us. We all knew time would eventually tell but I’m here to inform you, the time is now.
My childhood was the perfect storm of chaos which allowed me to develop the skills to look back, throw away my ego, and accurately illuminate the progression of what was going on in my brain for the benefit of others. My house was known as a “Host Home” which is a place where developmentally disabled children can escape their, often times, violent and unsanitary group homes in the foster care system. For a little over a decade of my life it was kind of like a transitionary home where my foster siblings would stay until they found a family looking to adopt them. As little kids, my brother and I had to develop patience, empathy, discipline, and a positive outlook on life just to live in harmony with our numerous foster siblings. In highschool I wrestled and, as many of you know, wrestling is no joke. Admittedly, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into yet some real deal discipline came out of my time on the mat. I still wear my wrestling shoes to the gym so that I can access the intensity that is instilled in them.
The months following my highschool graduation, I went to the University of Colorado Boulder as a Marketing major. The more I learned, the more I realized that my experiences growing up were directly influenced by the line of work I was getting into. I became more and more interested in marketing and the parallels of unrestricted marketing and the capitalistic “make money at all costs” type of mentality. It was around this time that I, like most college kids (don’t kid yourself mom and dad) began experiementing with psychedelics. I won’t get into it today, but this is what allowed me to detatch from my ego and observe, analyze, and judge my past and present without much bias. Inevitably, from here my spiritual journey started and will probably never stop. I’m extremely into holistic health; breathwork, meditation, fitness, etc but the effects of unrestricted social media occupy my mind more than anything else. I’m a pretty average young adult really.
My plan with these articles is to form a sort of narrative that serves a different purpose depending on who is reading. Each article will tackle a different part of the human experience that is directly influenced by social media. We’ll dive deep into my formative years (middle school through college) and analyze the way social media affected me socially, mentally, and physically. My goal is not to bash social media or marketers but to spread awareness of what unrestricted screen time can do to an average kid with an unusualy strong sense of semotional intelligence. It is up to you to make changes in the way you view/use your screen time based on how you see it affecting your life. If you haven’t already, check out The Social Dilemma on Netflix — this is a lifechanging documentary which will give you some context as to why I would take the time to share my experiences with you.
The internet and social media are the future — this is inevitable — no one is complaining but no one is fixing the issue of boundless marketing and attention grabbing — our attention is the product and we are the “users” of social media/internet — someone needs to put out a handbook of the future, for the mental health, self esteem, and confidence of the next generation to make well informed decisions — won’t go into data gathering or what happens to our data because Social Dilemma does a good job of that, lets keep it simple.
If you made it this far, I love you. Join me next time when I discuss how social media influenced my empathy throughout the years.
