preview

Technology Awareness : Finally Understanding Why I Am So Bad At Texting Back Essay

Better Essays

Technology Awareness: Finally Understanding Why I am So Bad at Texting Back

As an average teenager living in the United States, I have certainly reached the ‘conversion’ stage in the domestication, or normalization, of communication technology in my everyday life (Baym, 2015). My iPhone sits in the back pocket of my jeans and I look at it absentmindedly on average four to five times an hour. It no longer feels like a new or exciting piece of tech and I take it for granted. Specific mediums of communication technology, such as my phone, have become so normalized that I do not notice how I use them day in and day out. It was not until I had to log my actions that I noticed the patterns in my behavior when using communication technology. It was not until taking this class, Introduction to Online Communication, that I gained the vocabulary to articulate why I behave the way I do. Theories such as ‘Media Richness’ and ‘Social Presence’ have helped me understand why many of my interactions online centered around certain topics or why I struggle to respond to mediated messages.
On the day that I logged my use of communication technology, it stood out to me that when I was an active participant the majority of my communication centered on organizing future communications. Of the 26 activities I logged on October 5, 2016, 20 of them revolved around strategizing how to rendezvous with those same co-communicators either in person or on another technological medium. Four of

Get Access