Entry #9 Media in the 21st Century

I grew up (and am still growing up) in the 21st century. I have never known life with out the internet, social media, and 24 hour streaming news. I've never put a lot of thought into what media is because it has always just been incorporated into my way of life. I guess I just take it for granted. There was a time when kids could only watch cartoons on Saturday morning. Now we can watch it 24 hours a day on several different networks. The news only came on 3 times a day for one hour each time and other than that there was a newspaper. My family recently cancelled the newspaper when my dad finally got a smartphone. He had this old flip phone with no camera until 2015 when it finally broke.


Once he got his new phone he finally realized he could watch ESPN any time he wanted. The power of media.
But he still drives a 1998 Honda Civic with 220,000 miles on. I guess he is slowly moving into the 21st Century.

But is all of this advanced media good? In my opinion it is both good and bad. We are a more informed society, but not all of the information we are given is accurate. Digital media is readily available at any time of the day, but libraries and newspapers are slowly dying because of it. Facebook started out as a way to stay connected with family and friends and now it has become a massive media outlet filled with hate, discrimination, bullying and advertisements. Social media, digital information, smart phones, activity trackers, texting, online banking, mobile banking seems to have become the umbilical cord for staying connected. But this also makes us vulnerable to hacking, tracking and blackmailing.

We as a society have become dependent on media. We connect to the TV, internet, phone more than we connect to people. We text our family member's to come to the dinner table to eat. My parents can track my driving and know when I am speeding. One time my friends wanted me to lie to my mom about where I was at and I was like, dude....she can see where my car is on her phone app. We have an addiction to media.
                      What would we do without Google? I don't know, Google it.