I have a love hate relationship with my media ––a sentiment which I think many people today share. It’s easy to say I hate it, to say that I feel it’s consuming my life and that I can’t seem to disconnect from it. But over time, I’ve started to realize that maybe this isn’t such a bad thing. Especially now that I’m away from my family and my closest friends, my media allows me to stay in touch with them. I share my life with those I care about in the form of videos, pictures and facetime calls. I get to peek in on their lives in the same way ––it’s the next best thing to being there in person. It’s easy.
It’s just as easy, however, to veer off of my study plans and start endlessly scrolling through instagram. It gets a little harder to focus on the things I need to get done when I have access to the world at the tip of my fingers ––all finely packaged into a single, convenient device. Again, it would be easy to say that this is bad and call it a day, but the sheer disappointment I feel after wasting hours on tiktok, and subsequently having to stay up way too late, has taught me at least a semblance of self control. In some ways, I feel it has made me more disciplined.
Media can be overwhelming. I have access to so much, it’s sometimes hard to choose what I want to spend time doing. But as a result of this dilemma, I have become more selective. I have grown with my media, evolved, and learned to easily maneuver around whirlwinds of choices and distractions.
I’m not particularly fond of silence. My life has always been monopolized by music. With my media I can have my headphones in whenever I want and blast songs during any especially dull moments where I am waiting for public transport. So on any occasion when I have said I hate my media, I think what I just didn’t like was my inability to focus, or choose whatever I defined as a “good” use of my time. For the most part, I love being able to connect with those I care for, especially when they are miles away. I love being able to find the answers to random 3 AM questions in mere seconds. I love being able to drown out dull silences.
(Student ID: 13552740)
Why I Heart My Media 