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the final reflection

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In my everyday life I consume way too much media. I am usually always on a various form of media whenever I am awake. I use media to wake up, having a song as my alarm in the morning, am on my phone or looking at the newspaper during breakfast, listening to music during passing period of school and in the afternoon or night, I always check my phone whether it’s to go on social media, text others or look up questions I have about homework online. I find that all of this constant use of media heavily impacts my life. When I am always looking at a screen or multitasking with media it not only affects my overall health, but social interactions between others and my work ethic. I notice that being aware of my media consumption changes my interactions with media as it makes me constantly wonder why I use media so often- especially social media as I don’t particularly enjoy what impacts the media has on me but I feel the need to have and use it to stay connected with others and what’s go...
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even colleges advertise

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Now that the PSATs are over and colleges are looking at participants scores, everyone I know who signed up for them has been getting many emails every day. It’s exciting to see that colleges are interested in you, but when I showed them to my dad, he didn’t seem too convinced. Every email is similar and has the same message along the lines of, “challenging courses distinguish (whatever college that emails you) as one of the best schools in the nation.” It makes me wonder, is this a genuine letter or something that is just like a commercial? It’s so similar to advertisements I see every day that it’s hard to believe. It’s becoming like advertisements where there is so much clutter eventually nothing stands out. Of course I am interested in going to college and the fact that colleges are emailing me is exciting. However, with a closer look, I realize that underneath the individual college all of them are similar- private, Christian colleges. I than looked even closer and saw that th...
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is it possible to have a healthy relationship with media?

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I constantly find myself on media for no particular reason. Whether it is Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, listening to music researching information for school, I feel like I am always connected to a screen. I don’t know why but I feel like I constantly need to be connected to these apps. They appeal to our various needs so we continue coming back, and they make a profit from our addiction. Through our needs for affiliation, autonomy, to dominate and prominence, media provides an answer to all of these needs. When we want affiliation, we can post a picture or tweet something and see the likes and comments roll in. When we want autonomy, we can post about how amazing our life is, having so many opportunities and items, so we can single ourselves from others. When we want to dominate, we can compare likes, followers and comments to others to prove we are better than our peers. When we want prominence, we can post our best features about ourselves and our lives to be admired and respecte...
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the messages of misrepresentation

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Recently I watched the documentary MissRepresentation and although I knew of how bad some situations were, I became more aware of the issue. We are constantly on media in our everyday lives and we become surrounded by an overwhelming amount of behavior which becomes engraved in our minds. The 10 hours and 45 minutes of media a day transmit to viewers and eventually make us believe this is the way life is. For example, the idea of women being beautiful only when they are young and look a certain way is a complete reflection of the types of programs we see every day. As stated in MissRepresentation , women in their teens, 20s and 30s are 39% of the population yet are 71% off women on TV. Women in their 40s and older, on the other hand, are 47% of the population yet are 26% of women on TV. So why as a society do we not feature a majority of our population in the media? Well, from early ages we are conditioned to think what we and others around us should look like. For example, as psyc...
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looking back

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Every year for the past 5 years I’ve found myself in a similar situation. Over the summer for a couple weeks, I am whisked away from reality and put into an unfamiliar situation from everyday life. These years I’ve spent at camp have definitely impacted me in various ways. But most recently, I went over winter break. I found that this experience was unlike any other I had had there. Instead of the typical summer camp environment it had a strange feeling. The eerie winter days and nights were offsetting as well. Unlike a 2 or 3 week session, it was only a few days long. Now all of this is great, but you may wonder how it relates to media. I found that I didn’t have enough time to fully unwind from the constant move of everyday life. Even without the screens around, myself and everyone around me had a different type of vibe. We were still addicted to the never-ending impact media had in our lives. Different from the typical camp experience, we were in the haze of dealing with certai...
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streaks

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Many teens have them. They are a way of connection with friends or acquaintances so you’ll continue talking with them. So why are they so hard to end? Snapchat has grown into something everyone uses and it seems it’s not going to stop. We constantly send pictures to streaks everyday so we will continue to have a streak with them. It forces us to be on our phone, and more specifically, on snapchat. Snapchat also features snap-scores where anyone can see the amount of pictures or videos people have sent to each other. Essentially, the only reason this is here is for others to compete and have a higher score, making them want to use snapchat more to achieve it. And although snapchat is a way for you to stay connected with others by showing people where you go and what you do, its main existence for daily use is streaks. And even this is a problem. The use of snapchat the way it is now makes us think that we need to update our snapchat friends so we can show how much fun our life i...
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a pre-reflection

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With every event we’ve experienced in our lives comes a time to reflect on it. How it benefited us, how we changed from it, what we would be like without it, etc. One key event that I think of when I look at how my life has changed is overnight, sleep away camp. At the camp I’ve gone to for over 5 years, one thing that makes it so special is its no screen policy. This not only allows for better interactions between people, but stronger relationships between the campers.  I have found these past summers to be extremely life changing for me, as going to camp has brought something I never could have experienced at home into my life. I think that the result of having no current technology like phones or computers at a place where many kids are allows a place where they can be who they want to be and not have to worry about the constant pressure social media puts on us to constantly be updated. In my experience, I have found that I have met some of the best people at camp and I feel...
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