Every day in Ms. Nish’s class, someone is caught using their
phone. She has
told us she doesn’t necessarily consider the phones a distraction. Rather she
feels that people have become too consumed in their electronic devices, and
that the classroom should be a place reserved for face-to-face interactions.
Her concern is that our impulse when presented with free time is to immediately
fill it with our personal media sources.
Ms. Nish has a point. I think we’d all be
lying if we said we didn’t go on our phones in the few minutes before sleeping
at night. I agree with Ms. Nish in that digital media has become
somewhat of an impulse for our generation, much like what we’ve seen in Digital Nation. Does this necessarily make digital
media and media in general bad?
Personally, the most obvious media exposure I get is to social media. Instagram and Snapchat are how I mainly communicate with people aside from face-to-face interactions. They also serve as effective ways to stay up to date on current events and sports, learn about topics of interest, and, admittedly, kill time. Aside from social media, my media exposure comes from watching Netflix series such as Arrested Development and The Office, reading news, watching YouTube videos (mostly educational, but sometimes cat videos), watching and reading about sports, reading a monthly issue of Runner's World when it comes in the mail, listening to music, and of course texting and emailing.
In spite of the media with which we choose to have a relationship to follow our interests, there are other forms of media we involuntarily experience. The most prominent example is advertising. Each of the media outlets I listed have some type of advertising, particularly those on the Internet. Even though ads may not seem significant, they affect our values and understanding of the world in ways we don't realize.
Ms. Nish is right about our obsession with the media. I've definitely seen how common media outlets are in daily life, but the quality of our exposure depends on how we regulate our intake and what outlets we choose to expose ourselves to. My relationship with media is largely positive because I choose to make it so.
