Exploring the Impact of Digital Technologies: A Personal Reflection

This homework assignment presents a student's reflection on the pervasive influence of digital technologies in contemporary life. The student explores the various ways technology has become integrated into daily routines, using examples from a Christmas break to illustrate the use of devices like smartphones, tablets, and social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, and LinkedIn. The reflection covers activities from booking travel and communicating with family to job searching and creating digital scrapbooks, highlighting both the conveniences and potential drawbacks of constant connectivity and digital engagement. The assignment references key literature that supports the argument for how digital technologies are reshaping personal and social interactions, and overall, the student argues that digital advancements have streamlined various aspects of life, providing comfort and convenience.

Living in a Digital world

TABLE OF CONTENTS
REFLECTION.................................................................................................................................1
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................3

REFLECTION
I think living in a digital world has involved various advancements in the daily life of a
person. Whether it would be about socialising via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, where it is
making our life quite better and modern, the same time, there are some drawbacks as well of
using it as somewhere its overuse is making us unsociable and also, a reason for stress
sometimes (Greengard, 2011). I also have become habitable of using some digital technologies
in daily routine like in the Christmas break, I also made use of various digital technologies, so
presenting below a small-time-diary consisting of all my usage of these technologies. The time
diary is as following:
DAY 1 I woke up and checked my phone for new messages on WhatsApp, Facebook
etc. After that, I made my little sister read some stories on kindle and she
enjoyed much.
DAY 2 The second day, the whole family planned to celebrate Christmas on a tourist
location, so I booked the tickets and hotel from my iPad and it was very easy to
do so without any hectic.
DAY 3 After reaching there, I called many of my relatives using my cell phone who
were not on the trip and told them about the journey and about the beauty of the
place.
DAY 4 After reaching home from the trip, I searched for some jobs on LinkedIn using
my tablet because I am searching for a part-time job to do.
DAY 5 For one job, I searched on LinkedIn, I wrote an e-mail to the CEO of the
company including all the educational details and other necessary information.
DAY 6 Then, I gave an interview on Skype and I was selected for that part-time job.
DAY 7 For my sister's high school assignment, for making scrapbooks, I make use of
online apps for photo scrapping and making collage using my iPad. It was fun to
do so and there were various options to implement in the scrapbook.
In today's world, there is a huge importance of digital technologies as they help in
speeding up the rate of any work, even if it will be about contacting someone on Facebook or
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WhatsApp or gaining knowledge and extra information on tablets, iPads etc. (Cavanagh, 2012).
So, these have provided a sort of advancement in the daily routine. Like in the Christmas
holiday, my family planned to visit a tourist destination, so for booking a hotel there, I just used
my iPad and booked tickets on it. It was just simple and was very easy that my family didn't have
to visit the booking store and we booked it right from home. So, if there would not be any digital
way or technology, the life would have become quite harder (Llamas and Belk, 2013). So, I think
its involvement has made lives easy and has provided a comfort zone as well and also helped in
identifying our own self potential and capability of managing things well.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Cavanagh, S., 2012. Living in a digital world: Rethinking peer review, collaboration, and Open
Access. ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830. 2(1). p.15.
Greengard, S., 2011. Living in a digital world. Communications of the ACM. 54(10). pp.17-19.
Llamas, R. and Belk, R. W., 2013. Living in a digital world. The Routledge Companion to
Digital Consumption. New York, NY: Routledge.
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