--Originally published at Digital Identity

Sometimes you run into those days that they are just no good. As a quick introductory to this blog post I will start by saying that today has been a bit of that to me. First, the flu that I had for a while decided to kick in again. Second, I have no internet at home. Third, and final, the computer in which I usually work in has been updating for the past 2 hours. With that said this blog will most likely go up a little bit later than expected.

Anyways, let’s move into the actual topic of today’s discussion, which is digital interaction, and the effect of this in the physical world. Today in the course a conversation between a classmate, and our teacher Ken Bauer broke out. The classmate had the opinion that you should live in the moment, and that if you spent time in your phone you give of the idea that you’re being a little antisocial. Ken gave a completely opposite point of view in the matter. He explain that someone being in their phone doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t being social. They might be talking to someone else or giving an update of upcoming events. In this matter, I incline more to Ken’s point of view.

Something that technology has given us is a huge way of connectivity. There’s so many tool now to connect with people from all over the world that to a certain degree is unbelievable. Social media helps us to stay connected with people that are really far away. Personally, I still talk to a high school friend of mine that lives in New York, and we talk like we used to even when we lived relatively close to each other. It’s something beautiful, but like everything, there’s some bad sides.

The first bad side is that people abuse this. Yes. People abuse social media. A lot. It good to maintain an online interaction with people, but in certain cases it just gets ridiculous. I’ll give an example. Sometimes, when I’m playing with a friend of mine League of Legends I tell him to tell his brother to hope on, but he doesn’t get up, and goes to talk to his brother, no, he texts him to go online. Isn’t that too much? In my opinion, yeah. We need to learn how to responsibly use the tools that are provided to us.

The second one tackles a little bit of a cultural matter. Some people still have a bad view in modern technology. A great example can be found with my father. Now this is the second time that I mention him, but trust be, he sure is a character. My father loves technology. He’s always up to date, or at least tries to. However he is a little bit stubborn in his ways. Sometimes, he will strike into a conversation with my brother about digital interaction, because he tends to always be checking his phone to reply or talk to friends. My father has the idea that it’s more important to take in what is going on in your surroundings. Of course he knows that keeping up to date in an online environment is also important, but he does go more to the physical concept.

Now personally, I think it’s important to find a balance between real life, and digital life. What do you guys think? I’m really open to ideas about this subject.