Hi friends, I’m back for another blog, but hopefully this time I will try to sound like less of a suck up. I swear I just like the project 🙂 In class we continued to look at turning points this week, and since we’re going chronologically (mostly) we’re into the events that are significantly closer to my lifetime. The September 11th attacks took place around 3 years before I was born and affected my childhood as someone who went to airports quite a bit. The introduction of the iPhone took place when I was 7, so while I don’t remember that exact moment I do remember when my family got our first iPad in 2011.

The iPhone topic really stood out to me because of how much it separates my generation from others. I got my first phone when I was in grade 4 and that was a full on iPhone 4s, before I’d had an iPod touch. This means even from early elementary school I had all the information I could ever need at my fingertips; I could find any news story, talk to anyone, but let’s be honest I probably just used it to play games. However it scares me a little bit to see how young I was when I had this super huge influence, don’t even get me started on Instagram. 

There is no denying that this turning point was massive and is the reason our world is the way it is today, however it’s easy to find positives AND negatives from it. Positives include things like globalization, easy access to information, practicality, technological advancements, and much more. Some of the negatives are dependence on the device (leading to addiction), the amount of personal information you’re giving away, increases in mental health issues, and loss of some human connection. 

As one of the first people to grow up with this type of technological childhood I could tell you how much it was bad for me and I wish I never had it, but the reality is I love it and I believe it opens so many doors. The truth is it impacted our world in both negative and positives way, as most turning points do. No turning point or event can ever be labelled as a “good” or “bad” one because that is an opinionated view.