Category: Writing for Communications

The World at Our Fingertips

Isabelle JusticeLeave a comment

With the rise of new technology, there are the critics. The skeptics. The ones who believe that your iPhone will melt your brain. To what extent have smartphones influenced us? How has it changed our social development?

On the stage of Macworld in 2007, Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone as “an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator.” Soon after, tech companies surrendered to Apple’s grasp on the market because of their innovative ideas. According to TIME Magazine, the iPhone was a status symbol and the foundation of what a smartphone should accomplish. In 15 years, we’ve been able to see the effects of such a powerful device.

“While it offers many opportunities for positive and rewarding uses, there are also clear negatives to the smartphone,” wrote Heidi Hackford in her contribution to the Computer History Museum. “People can become addicted to constant connection and feel powerless and depressed without it.”

Since 2010, iPhone users trickled down from adults to children. Being the oldest of five siblings, I have seen the difference in childhood between each sibling. For example, my younger sister started looking more mature than I did when I was her age. The same has gone for my brothers.

Katie Webb, 21 years old and a full-time college student at Utah State University, understands this difference. She has also seen the first-wave effects of the iPhone and is part of the iGen, a group of children that knew a childhood without a smartphone and entered Junior High with one.

“The people I followed I wasn’t actually friends with I think that shows what I thought social media was even before high school,” said Webb. “You’re supposed to post things that show your identity. You’re supposed to make yourself seem desirable or presentable … for me, (social media) wasn’t something that I did for fun, it was something that I did because I felt I was supposed to.”

I remember this clearly in the mid-2010s. Social media was viewed as a portfolio of your life at the mercy of the internet. It was a game, a comparison, but that mindset has shifted in the last 5 years.

“It’s more just for the fun of it,” explained 14-year-old Esther Facer. “Some of my friends ask why I don’t post and it’s just like I don’t really care. I think it’s more about your personality than your age. Most of the personalities of our age group look at social media as a joke than serious like people your age did when they were younger.”

Why was my experience so different than hers? Zhaocai Jiang, a psychologist who led a study for BMC Psychiatry based on screen time, found that the adverse effects of screen time apply to everyone, but are amplified due to personality traits and self-control. He believes the more we give in screen time, our self-control is negatively impacted. And this is much worse for those with obsessive tendencies.

Technology is viewed as negative and addictive by a large portion of the media.

“There’s not a single exception,” said Jean M. Twenge in her editorial for The Atlantic. “All screen activities are linked to less happiness, and all non-screen activities are linked to more happiness.”

While this is proven to be true, Vicky Capua commented that perhaps it is a double-edged sword. Capua explained that technology is a powerful tool and its results are dependent on how you use it. Webb also felt we should put some of the responsibility on ourselves.

“It’s going to be better for the people who have a different mindset of how they look at social media and that’s what going to affect their children,” Webb explained.

Whether it’s the fault of big-tech incentives or self-discipline, a common parenting goal is to make our children’s generation a happier one, even with invasive social media.

“It’s time for us to consider another possible explanation for why our kids are increasingly disengaged,” said Alexandra Samual in her editorial for Jstor Daily. “It’s because we’ve disengaged ourselves; we’re too busy looking down at our screens to look up at our kids.”

I have studied the ramifications of screen time, started a conversation with others, and looked at my own habits. In doing so, I can better understand those who believe that “the iPhone will melt your brain,” as well as the argument that our outcome is dependent on us.

As I watch my siblings grow up, keep in contact with childhood friends, and set my own boundaries with technology, I understand that screen time will continue to evolve. The world will revolve around it. After all, innovation is one of humanity’s strengths.

Ultimately, we are social creatures and we need each other. Society can reach to understand the effects of screen time while creating a better world for the future generation. Although a predicament, smartphones are a powerful tool, and it’s up to us how we use it.

Personal Memoir

Isabelle JusticeLeave a comment

I quickly sunk into the wooden chair, despite its discomfort. I covered my eyes, plugged my ears, and made little sing-song voices to hide the fact that my parents were squeezing any ounce of self-confidence I had fabricated over the years. Every story, every quirk, every skill I worked so hard to bury, was exposed. There was no hiding the fact that the boy I wanted to marry got to hear all about the real me, and this time I couldn’t change it.

From a little kid to 14 years old, I was a horse girl. Yes, all the stereotypes applied to me. I walked around with proud red cowgirl boots and went to horse lessons. To make matters worse, I would pretend to be whatever animal I was obsessed with that week.

Halloween 2008

In 2nd grade, I begged my mom to make me a raccoon costume for Halloween. She made a grey onesie, black velvet ears and painted my face to replicate a racoon’s mask. I still have those pictures of me dressed up. From 15 to 19, I spent a great deal of my free time deleting pictures, ripping out journal entries, throwing away schoolwork and rewriting my narrative. I subconsciously started introducing as myself “Izzy” to distance myself from the horse crazed “Isabelle”. I worked so hard to change my personality and as I stepped back into the shadows, it seemed everyone else forgot about that horse girl too.

Before I got engaged, I brought my boyfriend to Utah to meet my family. He passed with flying colors of approval from my parents and siblings. The last night of our trip, we went to an Italian restaurant in Ogden. We ordered appetizers and my parents got to share their stories of snowboarding while my boyfriend shared surfing memories. Things were going great, they were getting along and I got to see the look of joy from the 3 people I loved the most in the world. Our dinners came to the table, then my nightmare began.

“Isabelle loved to write stories about horses. She used to make books and read them to us.”

“Isabelle has a great singing voice! She used to write songs and sing them on the ukulele.”

“One year for Halloween, Isabelle was a racoon! She would crawl on the ground to get into character.”

My boyfriend was laughing hysterically and intermittently looking my way. He had this positive yet shocked expression that there was so much he didn’t know about me. My parents beamed with pride as they shared story after story. I felt a physical pain caused purely by my own mind and I shut down for the rest of the night.

When we got home, my boyfriend gave me an understanding hug. He pulled back and asked, “Why did you never tell me?” In three months of us dating, I worked so hard to hide any emotion I felt. I didn’t want to be that girl. I liked this guy so badly that I didn’t want to mess things up. I never told him how I was a great artist or wrote beautiful poetry. I never told him how my first word was horse or that I was an emotional person. Yet that night, the walls I had built started to crumble. To my surprise, he told me he loved me more because of my quirky traits. The gears in my brain began to turn; sometimes people love you even if you think you’re weird, even if you don’t deserve it at all. Sometimes, it’s just there.

Fly On the Wall

Isabelle JusticeLeave a comment

For this assignment, I was to simply people-watch and
write what I saw. This was the result.

A man in a black trench coat leaned against his shopping cart. With his dark-brimmed hat tilting towards the front of his head, the man was serious. Somber even, and he tapped mindlessly on his phone.

At Walmart, there were a humorously large amount of newlywed couples. Each pair that walked quickly away from the self-checkout, and into the snowfall, held hands. Maybe it was a statement of their relationship.

College girls that walked around Walmart were almost always in a group. Presumably roommates, and they gossiped in hushed tones. Some wore hoodies and joggers while others wore beanies and white vans. Rednecks walked out with cases of beer and reeked the stain of a cigarette. There were no packs of college boys on a Thursday evening, and if there was a young unmarried man, he shopped exclusively alone. Mothers rushed quickly out the store, carrying loud children, or scolding an upset pre-teen. Some mothers walked by with piles of groceries and babies that held a mindless wide-eyed gaze.

In the Subway dining area, the store was empty — except for one employee that paced in the backroom. On the wall, a paper stated, “Hiring! $10 per hour minimum. Apply at Subway Careers.” An old man tapped the bell for a sandwich.

A Walmart employee stands next to the entrance, welcoming in strangers that don’t reply. Winter is here, and while Walmart stays busy on the outside, the mundane pace of life lives on the inside.