Summative Statement: Are you a gadget?

“Are you a digital gadget?” When I first heard this question in class, without any doubt, I raised up my hands. Ever since I could remember, digital products are an indispensable part of people’s lives. As time goes on, I rely more and more on digital products, software and media. Cellphone and laptop company me the most time and I use them to watch films on Youtube, shop online and even order my meals on Uber Eat. Instead of hanging out together, I chat with my friends and we know each other’s life on all kinds of social media. As for software, I never send any photos without using Photoshop to make them look better. From my perspective, I, and most young generations called digital natives, involve so deeply in the digital world that we ourselves become part of the digital era.

However, after I saw what the class would discuss, I become self-doubt. Even though I’m immersed in digital world, I seldom think about the issues we discussed in class. I have never deliberately expressed or shaped my identity into certain type on social media, but, indeed, what I send on social media gives other a broad impression of who am I. I start to pay attention to different ethical problems of every digital website and social media that I have never discerned before. These thoughts contribute to my first digital essay about why Chinese government prohibits Facebook. The class also provide me more professional knowledge to acquire profound thinking about some abstract definition that I already known before, such as filter bubble: far from a digital information filtering system that I thought before, filter bubble provides people a fixed type of information that, in some degree, restrict our information and social boundary. After this semester, I still think I’m a digital gadget, but I figure out that there are two types of them: some understand digital world and utilize it, others are swallowed by the digital world.

My final project is an extension of the former idea: investigating whether Chinese international student apply digital media properly to help them blend in a new environment. The result kind of reflect my conjecture. Derek Liu, one of my friend who came to America in 2014, told me that he relies more on digital products in the United States, since he has less people to talk with and play with. “I hold my cellphone all the time in the cafeteria, because I can talk with nobody and I don’t want to be lonely.” Indeed, Chinese international students avoid social interactions by immersing in the digital world, but are digital gadgets really satisfied? Although I could never get an accurate answer to this question, through my final project, I saw how Chinese international students are perplexed by the difference between their identities and how their social media portrait their identities. Moreover, I discerned the culture dilemma they face when using an America social media. After all, I believe that the world is developing in a digital way that influence everybody’s life, no matter you are a digital gadget or not. To live a better life in this digital era, we should learn digital knowledge, think about ethical and humanist problems under the digital backgrounds, cooperate with digital products and blend into digital culture.