Diary of a Media Addict

     I am as a media and communication student; I realized that I spend the most of my time with technological devices. The first thing that I do every morning when I wake up, just going to in front of my computer, turn it on and then be online. I always consider why I am doing this. Is it obligatory? Is reason being  an addict? Or being human in the 21^st Century?

        As I said, every morning when I wake up, the first thing is pushing turn on button of my laptop and then eating something. It claims that, Internet and computer are more important than main needs of my body. I spent time in front of computer around 5-6 hours in a day but I am talking with people around 1-2 hours. I check my mails and Facebook profile generally more than 15 times in a day and there are maybe just 3-5 new important things happen on my profile and I receive maybe 2-3 important mails each day. Therefore, I spent maybe half of the time with internet for just surfing. I am reading Turkish newspapers, I am looking videos on YouTube and I am talking with friends and family on Skype. When I was in Turkey, I was watching TV around 3-4 hours in a day but in Finland, I do not have TV and also if I had, I do not think that I will watch it because language is very important thing for watching TV because when people watch TV, they generally want make their mind empty and relax so people prefer their native language speaking TV channels, in addition, for me it is meaningless to watch TV in Finland. Internet and computer take TV’s place and I am also watching Turkish TV series and channels through Internet. In Finland, mobile phone is not as important as in Turkey but still I always need to carry it with me everywhere. It makes me feel that I am connected with the world somehow and when I want to reach someone and if somebody tries to reach me, it is perfect way for me to have mobile phone. However, last week, I forgot my phone in my room and during the day, I always felt uncomfortable and “naked”. I was always checking my pockets because every hour, I forgot that I do not have my mobile phone with me. I felt helpless and hopeless because if I want to call someone and if there is an emergency, I could be totally lost without my phone. When I went back to home in the evening, I immediately  checked my phone, there was no calling or message and I felt strange, and I realized also when I have my phone with me, I am talking maybe once or twice time in a day and some text messages, nothing more and busy. Recently, the most important thing that I realized is how my computer is important for me. Two weeks ago, my laptop computer was broken and everything changed in my daily life because I was spending my time between home, school and friends. After I lost my laptop, I have not been in home as much as before. I felt that, everything is going on the Internet but I was out of that thing. I started to spend my time more in the school computer labs or in the library. I needed my mobile phone more than before to keep in touch with people and I met with my friends more often because there was nothing special to do for me at home after all.  When I was at home, I spent more time to read books. Generally I read book for 1 hour before sleeping but without computer, I started to get used to read books in daytime and any time when I got bored and I realized I started to read around 2 hours and maybe more. When I was reading, I felt that, I was doing more useful things than before and spent more time to improve myself. Also I realized that I have nice games on my mobile phone because I got bored without laptop and I checked what I have on my mobile phone to kill time and I found few good mobile games. My phone became more important for me after my laptop left me.

    It has been 20 days since my computer is broken and I think when I get my new laptop, everything will change to same as before and my new computer will be my new friend but after this nice and long experience, I will try not to lose myself in the labyrinth of the Internet and I will turn my face to real life more than before. This experience taught me, we can live without our computers but now, ironically, I am in a computer lab, I have got special key to enter to this computer lab for 24 hours and I am writing my summary on the computer to send it to my lecture blog on the Internet. Therefore, there is no escape from this big heaven of media and technology but I think the point is, we should control our using of these devices and media , and we should not let them to control our lives.