Media Reflection

           

  I consume a lot of media on a day to day basis.  From the articles I read, to the posts I see, to the ads that are everywhere, media fills my life.  This media has a huge impact on my life, but I only truly understood how large of an impact it has after working through these media blogs and the classes that went along with it.  Because I now understand the needs that advertisers try to satisfy and the techniques they use to do it, I feel like these ads affect me a little bit less. Of course, advertisements will always affect me, but because I know all the things companies use to make me buy their products, I feel that I am affected less.  I also know more about how media manipulates our thoughts, and I feel like this helps me to be manipulated less than the average consumer, but this may just be wishful thinking. 

            Throughout the Media unit, I realized that I probably should spend less time with media, and hopefully lessen the effect that media has on my life. However, I haven’t quite managed to accomplish this yet.  Media is too big of a draw for me to just stop going on social media, or not watch any YouTube at all.  However, I will, and I am, trying to cut down on my consumption, as I realize its importance. 

            It is greatly important to have media literacy and to be an educated consumer, and the Media Unit greatly helped me in both of these regards.  With media literacy, you can understand the media that you see, and realize that not everything is necessarily true. As discussed in MissRepresentation, media literacy can help girls, but everyone else as well, understand that they don’t have to look exactly like the people on their favorite shows or on social media, and that even those people don’t look the same in real life.  By being an educated consumer, we also understand the motives behind the ads we see all the time, and this helps us understand that these products won’t actually do the magic things they promise. Because I now know that companies will do whatever it takes to get us to buy their products, as well as knowing the strategies they use to do that, I feel that I am less likely to be persuaded by these ads, and if I am, I at least know why that is. 

            Overall, these blogs and this unit taught me a lot of things that I can actually apply to the real world.  By writing reflection type posts after watching videos, and detailing my own experiances, I became a lot more familiar with the media around me, and also learned how to navigate the world of media in a better, and more constructive, way.