Daily Dose of Media

• February 10th 3:00PM- Computer (2 hours): Wrote essay for English, read chapter of online PR textbook
• February 10th 7:00PM- Phone (1 hour): Watched Adam LZ on Youtube
• February 11th 1:00PM- Computer (1 hour): Listened to all 3 lecture videos for emergent media
• February 11th 3:00PM- Computer (2 hours): Played video games
• February 11th 8:00PM- Xbox One (2 hours): Played Forza Horizon 4
• February 11th 11:00PM- Phone (1 hour): Browsed through social media
• February 12th 1:00PM- Computer (1 hour): Did more English work
• February 12th 3:00PM- Computer (2 hours): Played video games

As you can see by the numbers and the hours, I spend lots of time on technology each day. Weather it be for school work, or my own personal pleasure, I’m using media a lot each day. I think that media is used so much in our lives because people can learn a lot from it, but there are also consequences to being drawn into media as much as we are today.

One possible downfall to media is the amount of messages sent. People interpret things differently. In 2.3 “components of media literacy” the powerpoint says that because we all decode messages in different ways we want to take shortcuts, such as stereotypes. When people do this, messages you might be trying to send could be misinterpreted.

One upside for media however, is the upcoming of new products that consumers have never seen before. In August of 2012, the production of the Oculus Rift Virtual Reality headset began. This product caught fire when it hit the open market because nobody had ever seen anything quite like this before. In 4.1 “patterns of development” it states that new innovative products have no standards set, so its up to the consumers to decide how much the item will impact them. For some people, the Oculus Rift meant nothing. But I think for people like content creator on YouTube, this was a huge deal. The ideas for videos including the product are endless, and some content creators even became more popular thanks to the product.

Most people is todays world have all types of devices that have access to media. Laptops, Computers, Phones, just about anything that can be connected to the internet has access to some form of media. In 4.3 “convergence” it says that all media, on the digital level, looked the same. Now this may be true for the 90s because technology had just become truly relevant and we didn’t have anything nearly as powerful back then as we do today. In todays media, I think everything looks different. There’s different formats of media when you compare it from your phone to your laptop. Some media is only available on certain technology. Sometimes media may require an extra add on that you may not have. The point being, that no media today is the same, although the same concepts of media are still the same.

Going back to my media usage, I think my numbers are pretty reasonable. Take into account that I’m a college student, all the notes for classes are online, I have to take quizzes and tests online, over half of my textbooks this semester are online textbooks, essays are no longer handwritten. There are so many factors that go into media use, especially for college kids. We might as well be considered an online school at this point. I go to class, listen to a teacher talk for about an hour, sometimes more, and then I get up and leave. I get back to my dorm, and what do I do? I do all my work for those classes online.

Aside from work for my classes, whenever I’m done, I like to reward myself for my hard work. I do this by relaxing and either watching youtube videos, or playing video games whether it be on my Xbox or my laptop. Depending on the person, these hours may be different because not everyone plays video games or watches YouTube. Others might spend their time just scrolling through instagram, or watching Netflix or TV.

To conclude my thoughts. Media has both upsides and downsides. I think depending on the person and the situation that person is in, your personal activity in media could be different. I think my usage is higher because I’m in college and a majority of the things I do involve me being on a computer. But for say a 50 year old who’s a clinical therapist, their time on media would be considerably less because they’re spending all day talking to clients and meeting people, so they don’t have time to browse through instagram or watch YouTube videos, or play video games.