Recently, I stumbled across an interesting YouTube video. The video, made by a high school student, shared ways that she has found to excel in online learning during the past academic year. In the video, she showed how she uses computer hacks or tricks to make learning easier. Advice ranged from ideas I already knew about, like using Google Scholar to find scholarly references and making group study guides (which, if you are not already doing and is allowed by your professor, you should do), to using a voice-to-text writer to make writing papers less strenuous. The latter I am now using to write this, and, let me tell you, I think it will be a new mainstay.

I have always thought that I was a tech person. I generally know my way around the newest phone applications and the computer to some extent. A few days ago, I helped a 60-year-old woman work an app on her phone that I did not even have any experience with myself. And just yesterday, I helped my dad take a screenshot of his computer screen (command-shift-3 for any of my Mac friends out there). To say I have been a bit over-confident in my abilities would be an understatement. After watching this YouTube video, I was struck for the first time in a while with the fact that I had a knowledge gap. Some of the things this teenager said were no-brainers, while others were utterly new. 

In hindsight, it is crazy to think about how much technology has changed just in the short period that I can remember. For example, I am older than Google, Facebook and Twitter. I grew up in a time when people did not even have smartphones. Back in the day, AKA middle school, it was the coolest thing ever to have a Razor flip phone. I had a Nokia brick for comparison, and I thought I was a total loser. Nowadays, kids as young as first grade have smartphones; even the idea of taking away a child's phone is social suicide. 

I am the person who, back in 2018, was upset about Snapchat adding the story function. While I never posted anything about how much I disliked it, I saved a photo on my phone about how I could not find it and was never going to use it. Now I look at my friends' Snapchat stories every day. It is one of my favorite activities to do in the mornings before I got out of bed. Also, did you know that there are Snapchat original series too? If you were interested in watching any, Fake Up is very good. It is about illusion makeup artists who compete against each other. If you like a good mystery, Riddle Me This is another option. It has four seasons of content for you to watch and enjoy. 

Maybe I am not as bad at technology as I think, but when did technology start to move so fast? Of course, technology changes. At one point in time, communication across far distances was only possible through sending letters. Then telegraphs were invented, then phones to call, then texting capabilities, and now people send Snapchats or WhatsApp messages. It is not just the ways people communicate that have changed; technology has touched so many different facets of our lives, from transportation to education to entertainment.

Maybe it is part of getting older that I am falling behind to some extent with technology. But that is honestly kind of scary to think. I am a 25-year-old whose technical knowledge is already falling behind. As long as we can embrace the changes that occur, I think we as a society will be all right in the end. Just please, no more updates to Snapchat.

Vanessa Davis is a master’s student in the Department of Public Service and Administration