This assignment and course have affected me more personally than most other classes I have ever been enrolled in. Through evaluating my relationship with media, I have learned and internalized three key lessons. First, not everything is accurate or truthful. While this seems obvious and I don't remember a time when I actually believed everything was real, I was surprised by how much I trusted faulty sources. Large corporations and media companies do not have our best interest in mind, and manipulate us in order to serve their own interests, even if that means spreading manipulative and toxic messages that inaccurately portrays reality. Second, I feel as if I have come to truly recognize the impact that media has on our individual behavior and who we are as people. As we interact with media, it shapes our wants, desires, and how we act. While interacting with anything can influence us, media is specifically designed to control what we want, how we want it, and how we act. This magnifies the impact that it has on our lives. The third thing I learned is that media has not just changed and influenced me and those immediately around me, but that it has influenced the world and course of society on a larger scope. News media has influenced presidential elections, the education or misinformation of entire countries and populations, and what people care about and focus their lives toward mitigating or promotions. Social media has become the favourite outlet for our president to communicate with foreign leaders and citizens, the place for people to find who they are and express themselves, and the forefront for many social justice battles. The ever-increasing prevalence of media in our world is influencing everyone-- in both positive and negative ways. In so many aspects, at the personal, societal, and global scales, media holds the extreme power to influence actions, wants, and needs, and while this power is used to spark and maintain social change and connect people, the corporations leading have repeatedly shown more sinister manipulative purposes.
After internalizing these three observations, I have re-evaluated my personal relationships with media. While there are many positive parts of social media, I have become too reliant on media to dictate my actions and opinions of those around me. I have come to see how much time scrolling through Instagram, Twitter, and being on snap chats takes. In moderation and with a recognition of the impacts that this leads to, I don't believe that these actions are harmful. However, when we come to rely on social media and make it part of our typical daily schedule, it is a problem. There are times during the day that it seems are scheduled for social media. When I wake up, at lunch, and before I go to bed. At all of these times, there are more productive and healthy things that I can be doing. Also, I feel that interacting with social media in the morning and night has more of an impact on how I behave during the day and how well I sleep at night. Even if social media has really good impacts and was completely perfect, too much of it takes time away from better things. So, through the course of our media blog assignments, I have reevaluated and began to change my relationship with media. Overall, I have seems good results. I feel less tied down and am not as harsh and judgemental of myself. Obviously, things aren't perfect and I still enjoy social media, but I have noticed a change in my efforts to find balance. There is still more I need to evaluate and fix my relationship and dependence on media, but so far, I believe that I am off to a good start.
This assignment and course have affected me more personally than most other classes I have ever been enrolled in. Through evaluating my relationship with media, I have learned and internalized three key lessons. First, not everything is accurate or truthful. While this seems obvious and I don't remember a time when I actually believed everything was real, I was surprised by how much I trusted faulty sources. Large corporations and media companies do not have our best interest in mind, and manipulate us in order to serve their own interests, even if that means spreading manipulative and toxic messages that inaccurately portrays reality. Second, I feel as if I have come to truly recognize the impact that media has on our individual behavior and who we are as people. As we interact with media, it shapes our wants, desires, and how we act. While interacting with anything can influence us, media is specifically designed to control what we want, how we want it, and how we act. This magnifies the impact that it has on our lives. The third thing I learned is that media has not just changed and influenced me and those immediately around me, but that it has influenced the world and course of society on a larger scope. News media has influenced presidential elections, the education or misinformation of entire countries and populations, and what people care about and focus their lives toward mitigating or promotions. Social media has become the favourite outlet for our president to communicate with foreign leaders and citizens, the place for people to find who they are and express themselves, and the forefront for many social justice battles. The ever-increasing prevalence of media in our world is influencing everyone-- in both positive and negative ways. In so many aspects, at the personal, societal, and global scales, media holds the extreme power to influence actions, wants, and needs, and while this power is used to spark and maintain social change and connect people, the corporations leading have repeatedly shown more sinister manipulative purposes.
After internalizing these three observations, I have re-evaluated my personal relationships with media. While there are many positive parts of social media, I have become too reliant on media to dictate my actions and opinions of those around me. I have come to see how much time scrolling through Instagram, Twitter, and being on snap chats takes. In moderation and with a recognition of the impacts that this leads to, I don't believe that these actions are harmful. However, when we come to rely on social media and make it part of our typical daily schedule, it is a problem. There are times during the day that it seems are scheduled for social media. When I wake up, at lunch, and before I go to bed. At all of these times, there are more productive and healthy things that I can be doing. Also, I feel that interacting with social media in the morning and night has more of an impact on how I behave during the day and how well I sleep at night. Even if social media has really good impacts and was completely perfect, too much of it takes time away from better things. So, through the course of our media blog assignments, I have reevaluated and began to change my relationship with media. Overall, I have seems good results. I feel less tied down and am not as harsh and judgemental of myself. Obviously, things aren't perfect and I still enjoy social media, but I have noticed a change in my efforts to find balance. There is still more I need to evaluate and fix my relationship and dependence on media, but so far, I believe that I am off to a good start.
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