As my life went on after moving to America, I started forgetting all of the struggles that my family goes through back home. I started caring about my own problems. When I started using WhatsApp in high school, I quickly started to reconnect with my relatives. Although this was 7 years after moving to America, I started to realize that I was becoming selfish. I started living a better life and while I was doing that I completely disregarded the people who I grew up with, the ones who essentially raised me. Through WhatsApp, I received so many pictures of the conditions in Sudan, and those pictures made me feel like I was actually back there. Because of these connections, I was able to change my entire vision for the future and become more motivated to become successful and be able to help out my family. Because I have not been to Sudan in a very long time, I don't think that I would have communicated with my family still to this day without WhatsApp. Today, I use WhatsApp every day, which may also be a downside, but at least I know I'm using it for a good cause.
The point is that WhatsApp has helped me reconnect to those closest to me, and through that connection it has played a role in shaping the person that I am today. Especially nowadays, some technological platforms can be seen as problematic, such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and so on. But I believe that WhatsApp eliminates all of those problems and allows you to simply keep in touch with others. It is kind of hard to think of any cons to using WhatsApp. So for me, technology has been more of a positive thing than a negative.
I can really feel the way WhatsApp helped you to communicate with your family. The technologies helped us to connect places that are far away from each other. I also call to my mom using Skype to feel closer to home. And I can't imagine that just 10 years ago it was extremely hard to reach another country for a talk. And I'm not sure that I would be able to travel to another country for a long time without an opportunity to talk to my family when I want. Letters that take a month to get to an addressee is not an option in our ever-changing world. So communication technologies are a good thing, we just need to stop overusing it.
ReplyDeleteI relate to this so much. ALL my family lives in Yemen, and I have lived in America my whole life. Up until the age of 12, I went back to yemen every summer to visit family. After that, going back became impossible because of the civil unrest, and now it is virtually one of the hardest countries to visit. There are no planes that enter yemen, and the boarders are basically overtaken by a group called the Houthians. Last year I started just messaging my cousins and now I am contact with them almost every single day. I am so thankful to be able to talk to them, but i do also get sad when I think of the things they have to deal with, specially since most of my family lives in the capital where tensions are at an all time high. It was easy for me to forget about what was going on, but now that I am in contact with them regularly my perspective of this world I live in is transformed.
ReplyDeleteI definitely relate to this so much too! Even though I was born in the US, a large part of my family lives in India and it still blows my mind how we're able to communicate so easily. I remember having to buy calling cards and use AOL or MSN messenger, so each time we use WhatsApp to message, nonetheless seeing one another's faces in the palms of our hands, it's still jarring. Someone 20 years ago could never have imagined it being so easy, and that fact alone is a wonderful blessing. We're legitimately living in the future and we oftentimes don't realize it. Like Susan, I have Syrian friends that used to visit their home country every other summer but haven't been able to go since they last went in 2009 because of civil unrest as well. WhatsApp and Skype in that case, when family is always in danger, must even be more life-changing.
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