Sweet+Memory

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Unlike most of the people in the class, I grew up in China and came to America when I was 17. So in my childhood, there were many things about me that were different from other people. But when internet appeared in my life, it was a very important tool that connected me to the world. In the book of Sonia Livingstone, she said “We can no longer imagine living our daily lives- at leisure or at work, with family or friends-without media and communication technologies.” (Livingstone, 2002, pg. 1) When I started to use the internet when I was a child, I never thought it could be so important. But many years later, it became a big part of my life.

The first computer I had was a PC. I remember when I was in elementary school, I went back home after school and there was a computer in my home. I felt happy and surprised. But I don’t know that much about computers, so when I turned it on, I was afraid of clicking anything that might bring some problems to the computer. When internet started to be popular, just like other kids, I went online and played some online video games. There was one game that I loved, I don’t remember the name of the game, but it’s a shooting game which you have to shoot other aircrafts from your enemy, I was not good, but I always wanted to challenge myself to get a better score. Those games were so popular that everyday in my school, people were talking about them constantly. Even some of our teachers were big gamers. So it made me want to play more and more because if I didn’t, I would’ve been out of the conversation when my friends talked about it. Internet became part of my life at that time. Even though my parents were worried that I was too addicted to the video games, it wasn’t easy for me to stop playing them. Not only did I use the internet for online video games, but whenever I had some problems on my homework, I would use the internet to help me out. That was the good side my parents saw in the internet. There were not many websites that I could choose at that time since internet was not as popular as it is today. But it’s still very helpful.

When I was in the middle school, online chatting became very popular. Some chatting program like MSN, or one of the most popular Chinese chatting programs called QQ were very popular among my friends. Like the others, I downloaded all of those programs on my computer. Ever since online chatting became very popular, most of our friends started to talk online instead of using telephones. Even though my friends and I saw and talked to each other every day at school, we still spent lots of time talking online. In the beginning, we only had chatting system. Later, we could send some files to each other; overtime, more forms of entertainment like chatting by webcam or microphone became widely used. It brought us lots of fun, and I spent almost all my spare time on online chatting with my friends. There was one thing that I loved the most about chatting online with my friends, which was that whenever I had some problems on my homework, I’d ask my friends for help through the internet. It was easy to explain the problems by just typing them out.

My childhood was lots of fun when the internet started to become widely used. I was glad to have internet in my life, because it connected people together and kept them closer, which it still does today. Through the internet, people can communicate in a much easier way. It has become so important, that many people claim they cannot live without it. Just like what Sonia Livingstone said, we cannot imagine life without communication technologies like the internet.

Work Cited Livingstone, Sonia. (2002). Young People and New Media. Childhood, Youth and the Changing Media Environment. (Pg.1-26)

Edited by Ryan Pierce