Why I Heart My Media

The thing I simultaneously love and hate the most about media is how easily you can get lost in it. To me, media either an endless source of inspiration and fun or a complete waste of my time.

– student 13863096

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When I saw this topic, why do I love media? I ask myself; do I love media? The answer was yes, I love media. I already studied one year of advertising in U.S. college, it’s part of media. We study how to make advertising, and how to make people love it. When people saw your advertising, and they want to know more about the company. It makes me feel very proud. I think this makes me feel I want to do more about it. We use media all day, whatever Instagram, Facebook, or WeChat. It’s part of our life, I love to know more, and do some my own opinion on the media website.
Student number: 13612190

Media for most parts is fun and exciting – watching entertaining videos on Tik Tok, sending the best moments to your friends on Snapchat, seeing the best celebrity outfits on Instagram, or getting ideas for your new apartment on Pinterest. On the other hand, it can be reading or watching the news or basically anything else on TV. Also, wasting your time trying to find the best Youtube video or show on Netflix to watch while you eat your 2 euro microwave pasta from Albert Heijn. Whatever you do, enhances your life experience on this planet. And it goes like this for most of us living in the developed world.

But since I started studying media, one thought comes up in my mind every time I finish my online (how ironic, right?) lecture – I WANT TO THROW MY PHONE INTO THE CANAL. I’m so sick of it. It is basically like coming from the best course of analyzing media to being in it and “doing” it. When you are aware of it, it makes you go mad. Why are we doing this? What’s the point? Does it make our lives easier? Obviously not. These are the questions I ask myself every day, but I doubt that I will ever figure out the answers. Like never. That’s why it is more and more harder to come up with something under the title “Why I Heart My Media” every day. I don’t know if I do.

Student ID: 13560123

Media is so controversial. There are so many people saying media is bad and that it’s a terrible influence, (especially on younger people). Older people sometimes make us feel bad for using media so much by saying things such as, “You’re always on that damn phone” or “It’s because you’re on your phone so much”. Growing up, many of my friends were limited by their parents to how much TV they could watch and when exactly they could watch it. I mean, to an extent, I agree that kids should go outside and play and actually interact with the earth but nowadays that’s just not how things are anymore. I think it’s important to have a balance between the two. Yes, media can have malicious sides to it, and yes, it can leave negative impacts on people, but for others, (who learn how to use it correctly), media can be amazing. Media has taught me so much over the past ten years and I’ve grown and adapted my life to fit media into it, but thats not necessarily a bad thing. I use media to connect with my family, friends, school and work. Media used in the right way can push you to go so far. It allows you to create connections that can lead you to great opportunities in life. I don’t hate media at all. Has it made me feel shit at times? Yes. But so many things have been normalized now and people are all about embracing each detail, that you feel there’s almost nothing to be ashamed of anymore. I think that media is wonderful. There’s so much to explore in the media world and its beyond interesting. Anyways, sorry this mini-rant was all over the place, hope it was somewhat understandable.

13120999

My media gives me comfort,

it’s like eating my favourite dessert.

He’s there for me on a rainy day

and there to wipe my tears away.

Although she’s almost always so nice,

media’s support comes at a price.

They drain you of hours and hours,

until you’re completely and utterly out of power.

This is a gloomy way to look at media though,

it shouldn’t be able to take you so low.

So be your own boss and be in charge,

take the reins and live large 😉

My life in media is divided in two different worlds. One in Amsterdam and one in Sofia. In my country my media could be described as entertainment. I am scrolling through social media, I am reading a nice book or I am binge-watching a series. However, in Amsterdam the word that I will describe my media with is connection. No matter how many kilometers away are my parents, my friends, my family members with only one click on my phone or my laptop I can see them. I am pretty sure that I have spent 1/3 of my time in this beautiful city being on video calls with the people that I love the most.

Sometimes pursuing your dreams and being away from home seems awful. Sometimes you cry and think that media cannot bring anyone to you. They are there and you are here. You cannot hug them but you are connected with them. Living in a media world makes us a part of a global system of connections. I talk with friends in Spain or with family members in Austria and Germany. The truth is, yes, I cannot hug anyone of them. However, it is so much better to know that you can talk to them while seeing them laugh, cry, smile at you or even when they are angry at you. We should appreciate what media give us because without them we would have been a lot lonelier and sadder living far away from home.   

Antoniya Taseva 13888986

You know that feeling when you are going on a long trip and you have to take a ten-hour flight or sometimes even more…

We all prepare for a trip, packing up everything that we need.

The thing is, I personally also mainly prepare for the fact that at some point during the trip I won’t have a stable wifi connection.

So I kind of pack my phone for the trip too, downloading all sorts of media : some new albums on Spotify, tv shows on Netflix, podcasts, online books…

However what I end up doing every single time is packing too much. I just end up listening to my favorite songs and scrolling through my pictures full of memories, freeing some storage for the memories to come.

I’m basically “cleaning” my phone like I would clean my room. 

Now, being on a trip offline is one of the few acceptable reasons for not replying to messages immediately or even being fully updated about what is going on on instagram. Here, I’m not even talking about it being socially acceptable, but being personally acceptable for me to be disconnected .

The disconnection is a pleasant sensation that sometimes can feel like an urge. I guess we all have this “craving” sooner or later to be disconnected.

In the end, even if our media are good time fillers when we don’t have anything else to do, they tend to be a way to present. 

So at the end I love my media but sometimes I just need to get away from it, almost like a very personal relationship …

Student ID: 13565737

I think my love for Media started at an early age. I still have vivid memories of playing VHS tapes and later DVD’s of old Hanna-Barbera cartoons that my parents had gotten from the Western European world. Growing up in a pre-EU Eastern European medium, Western Media was the only way I could learn true democratic and politically correct views of the real world.

My favourite activities as a kid were playing Club Penguin and later Minecraft. Every gloomy rainy boring day was filled by tremendous amounts of fun provided by these games. Club Penguin increased my social skills and Minecraft expanded my creativity.

Later on in life, when I started Romanian Middle School in a “Gifted Children” institution I would escape the pressure and stress caused by 5-8 hours of homework a day by watching YouTube videos and enjoying funny skits. At about the same time, I had created a YouTube channel on my own where I would post skits with my friends, sadly I have deleted those clips after I had experienced some bullying in early teenage hood.

Around the same early teenage hood I had noticed that something about me was different , the culture in Eastern Europe, even nowadays is deeply homophobic and especially bi-phobic. Western Media helped me accept myself for who I was, no matter the discrimination that I had received.

Now, here comes the 10%. For a long time, I had noticed that social media algorithms tend to promote shock inducing content and even bullying to create more engagement. Following the allegations about the way Facebook prioritises their profits over the mental health of young teenagers made me absolutely furious, it inspired me to want to learn about that and maybe change something.

Learning to accept media and see why I love it was all determined by Mark’s amazing work and I am incredibly grateful for that.

13842013, George Cristian Cotea