Reflection

I consume media every single day of my life. The screen time app on my phone says that I spend an average of six hours on my phone every day. Half of those hours are spent on instagram, where I am constantly exposed to media and advertisement. Its a problem, I am very well aware. I am always listening to some form of music as well. Furthermore, I do homework while watching netflix in the background every single day. I would say that all this media consumption affects me negatively. I have a tendency to be influenced by or believe whatever I read. This is very not good. My constant consumption of media also causes me to be very insecure. An example of this would be seeing ads on instagram for clothing and feeling bad about my body because of it.
After taking a semester of critical thinking, I am much more aware of the media I consume. I find it funny actually. I find myself constantly pointing out the advertising techniques in ads I see and hear. For example, today I saw an ad for some car and they literally said “it’ll bring instant confidence”. Like damn, they really lead with making an implicit message explicit. It’s like they did not even try to hide their blatant simple solution. It was said right there in the open. The thing is, I never would have noticed that line if I hadn’t taken this class. I would have just glossed over it and acted like it wasnt something obviously strange. Also, I find myself being aware of the target markets when I see commercials. I immediately know the demographics the company was advertising to. Now, it seems like things like that are much more apparent and obvious to me than they used to be.
It is so important to have media literacy. This is because we all need to be aware of what we are being told to buy and not fall for it the way big companies want us to. We must see through it all clearly in order to make smart decisions as consumers. In my opinion, I find being aware of the media I’m consuming to be liberating. I feel that I make much more well educated choices regarding what I choose to buy. Media is being shoved down our throats constantly and it is all around us. It is so easy to get caught up in all of it. We all must educate ourselves and make an extra effort to be in the know in order to avoid it. 

I got a lot out of keeping this journal/blog about media. I used this platform to talk about things which I am genuinely passionate about. An example of this the Disney adaptation of Pocahontas which I made a post about. It felt nice and almost fun to write about it and share it with others. This assignment definitely helped improve my media literacy.

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