Within the past year, I personally have grown to be more cognizant of not only my consumption of media but the circumstances that drive me to want to consume media. While I have already been relatively self-aware of my patterns, this assignment has allowed me to dig deeper into my urges or incentives to feel stimulated. My average screen time is 4 hours and 20 minutes of the day, which I do not find super concerning, as I am currently busier with academics and athletics than usual. I wouldn’t necessarily find myself wasting my day away on my phone, rather I found myself reaching for it when I wanted to either pacify or stimulate myself.
In particular, I have become more observant of media’s implications in stifling basic interactions in my daily life. When I am in an elevator with another random person, I would find myself wanting to reach for my phone. I then would think about why I wanted to do this. Subconsciously, I aimed to remedy the supposed “discomfort” of standing and waiting awkwardly, without entertainment of some sort. Often, I feel as though we try to appear busy and active when we are in public, as a means of positioning ourselves away from a state of vulnerability. Do our phones strip away our ability to be okay with the mundane and stillness of our everyday lives? How has this limitless connectivity with technology wired our brains to be stifled away from basic human interactions? It brought me to think how when we enter classrooms, we are often “welcomed” by dozens of heads bowed down, captivated by the screens. There is this recurring dialogue of people meeting new people in an intimate setting, yet they will walk past each other on campus, “pretending” they don't see each other, as they are shielded behind the safety net of their phones. Through this mass digitization, feel as though our society harbors so much fear around this “awkwardness” with natural interactions when we really should be feeling okay and at ease with the simple “existing”.
Simultaneously, however, I am an avid supporter of media bolstering creativity and as a centrifuge for world-building. On Instagram, I am constantly inspired by fashion, art, food, etc., and this indeed has expanded my artistic taste and inspiration into other elements of my life. When I sit on the campus green and play my perfectly curated playlists, it makes me feel at peace. I feel like my music can express what words I cannot. As I get ready for bed, I listen to my favorite podcast, which makes me learn and reflect on myself. In my art class, I am the curator and editor for our digital arts journal, in which we reclaim the new-aged digitization of art. The interviews and responses I conduct while interacting with the artists and the pieces liberate me in a way that I wouldn’t have, had technology been out of the picture. I am trying to make more of an effort to consume media with intentional self- building, rather than aimlessly using it as a pacifier through superficial discomfort. This assignment has instilled the idea of not necessarily rejecting technology and media as all toxic but rather as a reminder to be intentional, aware, and thoughtful with the ways in which we allow it to influence our human condition.
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