reflection

I consume a lot of media on average, when I am bored, it’s waiting for me, when I have lots of things to do, it’s waiting for me. This impacts my life in many ways, social media, to be specific, has become my outlet when I just don’t want to deal with my life or just be distracted, which can be just as damaging. Being aware of my media consumption, has changed my interaction with media because whenever I see a specific ad on tv I instantly remember what we talk about in class, taking note of the color of the background, the camera angle, and the lighting of ads are some of the things that specifically stand out to me. Or when they talk about how you can be like everyone else, I quickly think of the advertising techniques we brushed up on in class. My media consumption habits have definitely changed this semester. I think because school has gotten so much more demanding and stressful, I find myself escaping the difficulties of my everyday life by opening up my computer or staring at my feed on Instagram for hours. I wish it wasn’t so, but to me, through feeding these habits makes coping with life easier. It’s improtant to have media literacy because when seeing anything proposed by a brand, we are not foreign to their normal ideas to trick people in to unnecessarily spend money. Being an educated consumer helps to benefit us because we are able to understand the entire picture and not just see the ad and flashy colors, but the actual product and idea they are selling or presenting. From keeping this log, I was able to analyze numerous ads and gain the information that will help me in the future and the present in making decisions that involve me needing to use my media analyzing. Thoughts that I have on media literacy would be asking the question of “do advertisers really use these techniques that I am analyzing— on purpose?” This question to me is important because do these ideas that I’ve picked up while learning about media literacy actually benefit me?