my relationship with media


My relationship with media- especially social media has greatly changed for me over the last couple of years. Going into 7th grade I got social media. The change between elementary school and middle school was extremely different. Adding the element of social media added more pressure to be ‘popular’. Having that sort of connection to others added a sense of needing to fit in and have the most followers or most likes on your posts. I started following people that I myself didn’t know but rather people that were popular at nearby schools or friends of friends of friends who I had never met. However, it did make me more connected to people around me and I got to see what their life was like and what their life was like outside of how I knew them. Entering into high school social media has had a different impact on me. I started not caring as much of what I was posting and not feeling the need to update constantly. However, I still somewhat cared about how many followers or likes I had on my pictures and various accounts. A new type of Instagram popped up called finstas or ‘fake instas’ where you let your friends follow you because you couldn’t feel that you could share everything on your ‘real insta.’ Although I did get one, I now think this is quite interesting because with social media, we should feel that we can share things with people who follow us. However, because it is common to let others follow you who you don’t really know, the need for these finstas have become needed.
There have been many times where I have thought to delete my social medias. I find myself scrolling through various apps and wondering if I even need it. Part of the reason I think this is, is because I go to camp every summer where I get to unplug. I find it extremely refreshing and an amazing break from the realities of life. I find that I actually get to socialize with others in a completely different way that I am not able to back home where we are constantly surrounded by media. Because of this, the way I look at media has completely changed and I find myself paying more attention to my surroundings where I see everyone staring at their phone rather than interacting with each other. It just shows me how much we have changed as a society and become addicted to screens rather than being with people around us- something I have unfortunately done as well. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

even colleges advertise

Image
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...
Read more

the final reflection

Image
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...
Read more

Past Mistakes (and tweets)

Image
In this day and age everyone has social media. It’s not just for a certain age or type of person- everyone’s on it. With this usage from many people that spread over many beliefs, I quite often come into contact with ideas that I am shocked anyone can believe. For example, on twitter, I often see many people talking about Trump’s latest tweet and how he is discussing X issue but not Y issue. I see extreme amounts of people engaging in these tweets whether they agree or disagree with the statements he is making. However, many people have dug deep into Trump’s past- especially his tweets and have found a big connection full of irony and hypocrisy throughout his current actions and past tweets. For example, in Aaron Blake’s article, Trump’s old tweets are becoming a minefield of hypocrisy , he highlights the ways in which our President has contradicted himself from the past.  However, this idea of having our past actions come back to us is a scary thought. Although I have no symp...
Read more