Tech Use and Privacy: A Beginners Guide

“Smartphones make us zombies! They’re turning our children into mindless slaves!” 

- Some arsehole who doesn’t understand technology. 

I love technology. I will advocate it to anyone who will listen. There have been occasions where the people in my life have bandied the word ‘addiction’ around and I can’t honestly say this is without merit.  

I set an alarm in the morning to make sure I’m awake at least 30 minutes before I have to get out of bed so I can spend the time checking out the usual stuff on my phone (Facebook, the apple ‘News’ app and Instagram). 

When I leave the house, I put my headphones on and either listen to music or a podcast while I check the Twitter stream. 

My work involves a computer, so I stare at that screen for a few hours behind a desk. 

On breaks and lunch, I usually flick between Imgur and Facebook. 

When I leave, I put my headphones back in, fire up another podcast, and read through the twitter stream on my way home. 

Once I get home and eat, I sit down with the laptop at another (much nicer) desk and check in with pretty much the same sites every day (The Verge, Gizmodo, Wired, Reddit, and YouTube). While I’m doing this, my Apple TV will be playing something from Netflix as background noise. 

I’ll get into bed, and read my kindle or a few news sites for an hour or so before I go to sleep. 

I am the first to admit that a lot of my free time is spent interacting with technology, but I don’t see that as a problem. In the entire history of humanity, there have never been more opportunities to learn. You can name almost any skill that comes to mind and if there isn’t at least a YouTube tutorial video showing how to do something step by step, I guarantee there’s a website that will teach you. So let's say you spend your day reading news articles online, listening to Podcasts and browsing Reddit. What’s the downside to all this reading? It’s better than staring at a TV for 12 hours watching some fake bimbo keep her light on for some walking haircut in a tight shirt. 

“They’re making people more and more anti-social.”

- The same arsehole as before.

As my friends and I are all responsible twenty-somethings, we pretty much spend most of our time working. This means we may not get to hang out as much as we did when we were teenagers. 

If it wasn’t for WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, I would genuinely only be able to speak to my friends once a month, maybe less. No one will phone each other, mind, and this is something I’m very ok with despite having a phone package with unlimited minutes (Landline, you say? Landline?! Do I look fucking Victorian to you?). Technology allows me to be MORE social, to catch up with my friends during the week and, (I’m assuming, here, as I’ve never actually tried to buy one) saves me a fucking fortune on carrier pigeons. 

I know a number of older people who barely speak to their mates on a regular basis unless there’s a major life event or they happen to run into them on the street. No regular phone calls, no letters, no contact unless it’s a special occasion. 

So who’s anti-social now, Maureen?!

Let's take this a step further. There are a few friends I have that I never would have met if it wasn’t for the Internet. My mate Laura lives in Preston. We’ve known each other since we were like 14 and we met on some Buffy the Vampire Slayer forum. We’ve met precisely once and I still speak to her on a regular basis. Where do I speak to her? ON THE INTERNET!

“They can find me anywhere! I don’t want to be tracked!” 

- Go on, guess who. 

Privacy is the next boogeyman rolled out by the tech nay-sayers (also, an excellent name for a band). Protecting yourself online is important, but a lot of people don’t seem to grasp this. They put a lot of detail about themselves online and then worry about someone finding them. However, they only do this with technology. This is like leaving your doors open and then complaining that someone stole your shit. Of course, they did! You left the bloody door open! Having an online presence works in the exact same way. If you don’t protect yourself and your details, then you can’t complain when they’re misused. 

So, here are some quick and easy steps to protect yourself online: 

Change your password.

If your password contains your name, or your date of birth, or a combination thereof, change it now. It should have no personal details at all. Go for something nonsensical like “BananaC0pterz229”. Random words, a capital letter or two and some numbers. This will make your password almost impossible to guess. 

Update your security questions.

Remember the big iCloud hack a while back where all the celebrities had their booby pics leaked online? In the weeks following it, it turned out the hackers guess their security question answers through information available online. So, if you have your secondary school listed on your Facebook page, and one of your security questions is “Which secondary school did I attend?”, you’re gonna make life a lot easier for anyone wanting access to your info. If that’s the easiest security question, then change it to a nickname. Something only you and your friends called it. You went to Hunter House? Update it to ‘Haunter House’. Whatever makes it harder to guess. 

Change the passcode on your mobile device. 

Seriously, the amount of people who use the year they were born to get into their phones or tablets is huge. Most phones now allow for an alphanumeric passcode. So instead of “1990” being used to unlock your phone, you can use “SouthPark2020”. It sounds like that’s going to be a pain to enter every time, but it’s going to be an extra level of protection and besides, most phones have fingerprint readers these days anyway. 

Disable location services. 

This is a big one if you use Twitter a lot. A lot of apps take your location data when you use them and that’s pretty scary. Whats scarier is the fact that some apps, like Twitter, can post these by default. If you don’t want people to know where you live, I would recommend not letting your phone know. Also, when you do disable location services, be prepared for your battery life to improve big time. 

Check your photos before posting them. 

I upload a lot of pictures online (too many, some would say) but I make sure they don’t have anything that could identify my address, or place of work. You’d be surprised how many photos online show peoples post or their works logo. 

Be very careful about what you do on public wifi. 

This isn’t one you hear a lot about, but it’s something I’m always very wary of. Let's say you’re in your local Starbucks, having your 20oz Strawberry and Cream frappe. You’re on your laptop or phone, connected to their wifi, browsing a site and see something you need to buy then and there. So you put your card details in and purchase it. Little do you know that the guy next to you has set up a fake network called ‘Starbucks UK’ and you’re not only online connected to it, but he sees everything you run through it, including the card details you used to purchase that vintage coffee pot from Etsy. 

There’s a simple workaround to this. It’s called a VPN or a Virtual Private Network. It means that any traffic coming out of your computer is encrypted. So even if you are connected to a false network, the person running it can’t see a thing. This means you're free to use public wifi without the fear of having any details caught by a 3rd party. My VPN of choice is ‘TunnelBear’ and I use it daily. It’s a paid service, but there are free VPNs out there. 

Think before you post. 

Finally, the most obvious and helpful tip I can give. Before you post anything online, think to yourself “Would I feel safe if a total stranger got their hands on this?”

If the answer is no, then don’t post it. 

I say this every time I post, but I’m hoping to make this a regular blog. Once a week, if my schedule allows it. If you’re worried about your data online or have any questions about the above, my details are in the ‘Contact section’. Happy to answer any questions. 

-GWB. 

Mental Health: A Guide

If you are a bloke that suffers from mental health, you are probably genuinely terrified about anyone, especially your male friends, finding out. 

In 2015, there were 318 suicides in Northern Ireland. Of those, 245 were male. We live in this toxic culture where somehow people can’t talk about how they feel because its been drummed into us by an older generation that we aren’t the real men that men used to be, or that men didn’t cry or get sad in their day, they just got on with things. Somehow the fact that John from the coal mines used to go home and beat his wife because of how unhappy he was in himself was something people were more ok with than John sitting down with his mate and telling him that he’s not content in life anymore. 

“What are you crying for, you big girl?”. Emotions are seen as feminine, and therefore weakness, even though women aren’t killing themselves at a terrifying rate. Think about that for a second. As a gender, we have come to accept the fact that some men would rather literally kill themselves than talk about their feelings. They would rather be dead than ‘weak’. 

I am sure almost everyone with mental health issues have been told to ‘cheer up’ or ‘stop being sad’, or that their condition doesn’t exist. My personal favourite is ‘there are people way worse off than you’, like just because other people are suffering, my own state of mind doesn’t matter. There isn’t some internal scale that balances out the problems of other people with your own and decide that you get to be happy all the time. And that’s something that you should always keep in mind on your worst days: Yes, of course other people have lives that, in comparison, are much worse than yours. But their troubles do not negate the ones you have, and that’s something that is so important to keep in mind. 

Mental health is important and should be looked after just as much as actual physical health. I’ve been coping with mine for roughly 12 years or so now and I’ve started to get good at handling the big flare ups. Some still knock me on my ass, but I control more than I let knock me down. So I’ve compiled a little guide on how to cope with things. Honestly, reading through them, you’ll probably think that they are incredibly self-explanatory and they won’t suit everyone, but I know from personal experience that seeing how other people have coped helped me curate my own list. 

1. Distraction

Sitting and listening to your brain tell you what a waste of space you are is not going to help you get over this. The first thing you need to do is get away from your thoughts. You need to step back, and concentrate on something else. I have a few things that help me with this. Top of that list is ambient music. Tycho are a great example of what works best for me (Link here). It’s laid back, but it’s also a little upbeat. I find ambient works better because I can read too much into lyrics on occasion. As there are no lyrics, that also means I can throw myself into something else. I love reading. It’s been my go to hobby since I was a child. And throwing yourself head first into someone else’s problems is always a much better alternative to worrying about your own. Especially if they are the little trivial thoughts that have only been magnified by an anxiety attack. Reading and ambient music are the best thing I can do for myself when it all gets a little much. It puts me in this little bubble that exists outside all the stupid crap my brain is trying to throw at me, and helps me calm down. When I’m calmer, that’s when I can start to be rational. When I can start to get better. 

Now this won’t always work for everyone. But that’s why there are alternatives. TV shows. Movies. Video games. YouTube. I have spent countless hours getting lost in a YouTube hole before realising that hey, I’m not actually freaking out anymore. 

        2) Removal

I find that locking yourself away is sometimes a bigger problem that an attack itself. Taking myself somewhere outside the living room or the house is the best thing I can do for myself. Sitting in panic is awful. Sitting in panic for 3 days convincing yourself that you’re not able to rejoin the outside world is even worse. I love coffee. And when I feel an attack coming on during the day, I grab a book or my tablet and take myself off somewhere I can sit for an hour or so, have a coffee and be outside my regular comfort zone. This might sound counterproductive when you’re anxious, but it works for me. The longer I sit and worry somewhere I’m comfortable, the longer it takes me to get out of my rut. Even just going for that walk makes me feel a little better and brighter. Hell, taking myself out to a coffee shop and doing something productive is the very reason I wrote this. 

        3) Venting

Sometimes I can distract myself, or remove myself and feel better because I’ve been worried about some stupid, trivial crap. On other occasions none of this will actually work because I’m worried about something tangible, something that needs fixed or something that I can’t control. I’m lucky enough that I have someone in my life that I can sit and blow off steam with, who’ll listen to me when I’m worried and not try and tell me how stupid I’m being or outlining, sometimes rightly, that I’m just blowing something way out of proportion. 

Not everyone has that. What’s even more frightening is a lot of people do have this, but are so worried about what other people will think of them that they won’t even attempt to use it. 

This will probably seem a little obvious, but if you’re really worried about talking to anyone, you can always vent to yourself. Write it down, type it up, make a voice memo on your phone and listen to it back. Just get it out of your system. 

        4) Managing the physical symptoms

Not everyone is aware of the physical symptoms that come with an anxiety attack or a serious bout of depression. Some people have trouble breathing and need to take themselves off to be alone, in a good size open space to let them regulate this. Breathing exercises work. Just taking 5 minutes to take long, deep breaths will steady your heart rate. There are apps on most platforms that will help you control your breathing cycle. I use the one that’s built into my watch about once a week. 

The main symptom I get, is the knot in my stomach. And when I need it to go away, I find a wall and I stand in front of it. I put my hands against it, and I start to push with the balls of my feet, up through my legs, and chest and press my hands against the wall. I hold that for about 5 seconds and when I let all the tension go, the knot I have goes with it. Probably the best thing that I’ve come across to date to help me manage my symptoms. 

          5) Remember: You are not alone

There are a lot of people going through depressive bouts, who suffer from anxiety, who think that they’re not good enough to do anything. They get lost in this wave of self-hatred and they get lost in themselves. Look after yourself. 

If you need to talk, you can come talk to me. I’m happy to go through the stuff that works for me, and to see how it can apply to you. If you need help, I can put you in touch with some people who helped me. Or even if you just want to talk or to vent, I’m happy to listen. Just don’t think you’re alone in this. 

- GWB