My Intimate Relationship with the Media

My Intimate Relationship

by Samuel Edison Lopez
April 24, 2016

     The topic of "What is your relationship with the media?" really got me thinking about how many times a day I casually scroll through my Instagram feed, look through a magazine, watch television, or even read the newspaper. To gain a better understanding of how attached I am to the media, I decided to keep track of how many times I felt the urge to access any form of it. By the end of Saturday (April 23rd), I had exposed myself to the media 40 times. That morning, the first thing that I did when I woke up was refresh my Instagram feed, and check my emails. One of the new emails that I had received had an ad promoting Team USA's 2016 Olympic Swim Team. At that moment, I had the urge to go swimming, as if one day of working out in the water would make me in someway similar to the glorified atheletes. As the day progressed, if at any moment I found myself board, I would immediately open up my phone and check my social media as if by instinct alone. The same thing happened while I was writing my term paper for Mr. Wong's class. I would begin to feel bored rather quickly, and my attention would quickly shift from my paper to my phone. I finally had to tell my mom to confiscate my phone for me until I was done working, and only then was I really able to complete my paper. By the end of the day, I had accessed the media a total of 31 times. This numbered really bothered me.

     After realizing how many times a day I access media, I started to wonder how many times a day people in general access the media. I'm sure that teenagers are more likely to feel such an attraction to the internet as opposed to people in their 50's or 60's. What I also wonder, is how children are starting to gain access to media at younger and younger ages. Surely being glued to your phone or evenly briefly checking it 30-something times a day must have an effect on how we interact with others face to face. I realized that the images the media puts in my face definitely has an impact on what activities I want to do, or what image I wish to obtain. I believe that media is affecting society today in more ways than we realized, and that most Americans have developed a somewhat intimate relationship with their phones and other technology that provides media access.