Farewell, Tech Addicts

Greetings for the last time, tech addicts! 💡

The time has time to write my final post. It has been an amazing journey so far throughout the whole semester and I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did!

Looking back to the beginning of the semester, I was feeling kind of insecure about the topic that I had to choose for my blog. But once that happened and I pinpointed what I wanted to write about, everything seemed to fall into place.

It all started on the 20^th of January, from the very first class during finals week. We were all encouraged to think about what topic we want to write about and share it next time with Professor Melody Gilbert. During next class we were all worried that our blogs won’t turn out right and that there might be no one to interview, but one by one we all created our very first blogs. That is when AUBG Tech Addicts was created, with all its initial design and first explanatory blog post.

In the months that followed, I interviewed 7 people in total. They were all very interested to try out the #nogadgetforaweek challenge and did great without their favorite tech. Contrary to what I expected, there wasn’t a single victim to knock on my room and crawl on their knees begging for their gadget back. But that only means we, addicts, aren’t a lost cause! All volunteers in the experiment saw the benefit of digital detox and realized they should moderate the use of tech in the future.

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I want to thank Selena, Dayana, and Aleksandar who were my victims in the first half of the semester. To learn more about their challenges and achievements, be sure to check out my midterm post where I made a short summary about each of their challenges. You can also take the time to read their full stories by clicking on their names above.

After the spring break, I started searching for people that are ready to give up on bigger gadgets and break stronger addictions. That’s when I invited Ivan Navodnyy for an interview, who decided to give up on Facebook, something definitely worth noting in my blog. After he successfully survived 7 days without Facebook, he said he found other ways to communicate with most of his friends and also other sources to read his favorite news.

From now on, I will go easy on Facebook.

Next, I interviewed Mariya Boteva, who gave up on her smartphone for a whole week. She used her old mobile phone during the period of the challenge and could only text and call her friends, no social apps and games. Mariya said she loved the challenge and that it was refreshing for her to try to live without constantly being in touch with everyone.

I can see how easy it is to get addicted to something you can use practically any second.

My next tech addict victim was Fahed El Zaher who abstained from playing mobile and video games for a total of two weeks! He gave up on his favorite mobile app, 8 Ball Pool, but in return found more time for reading and other means of entertainment that were more beneficial.

This experiment might actually turn out to be a life savior, and a motivation for a better future and career.

My last and most tortured victim was Dimitar Uzunov, who gave up on his gaming laptop for 10 days in order to finish up his senior project. He exchanged his favorite game, Hearthstone, for writing lines of code, but hopefully it all came to a good result. Unfortunately, as of the moment of writing. His senior project presentation hasn’t yet finished, so I can’t report on his performance. Still, I can say he was engaged in and almost finished with the making of his mobile game, as he asked for his laptop back in order to burn a CD with his project for the presentation.

You come at a good time. I have to finish my senior project, so that way I will have no distractions.

Along with the weekly posts I had to write throughout the semester, I also learned how to use many new tools, apps and techniques. Two very useful techniques I will remember are the 5 shot video and the structure for a news package. They definitely make any report look professional, as they are all classic techniques. For the editing of my videos and sound clips I used Sony Vegas and Audacity, programs that will definitely come in handy in the future. SoundCloud, bitly, YouTube editor, Storify, and Thinglink were all online tools that helped make my blog look and feel more professional and interactive. I learned some tips on social media marketing and advertising with the help of Facebook and Twitter. And of course, I also learned the tricks in blogging on WordPress, the platform that carries my blog on the World Wide Web.

I believe I managed to give you an answer to how long students can last without their favorite tech. Not that long but not that short either. It appears we students can manage to live without gadgets for around 9 days if we sum up the results of my volunteers and divide them by their number. I’m afraid, though, that with the new emerging smart technologies, these days might fall gradually to 0. Only time can show, so let’s not lose hope for now!

A big “Thanks You” to all of you readers who followed my blog every week and all those who took part in it! I enjoyed this journey a lot and might continue to reflect the cases of tech addicts every now and then in the future.