Life without media?
Can you imagine a life without media? I'm quite sure that many people will say "I literally cannot live without media." But the life was normal 20 years ago. It has not been a long time since the concept of media was developed.
In 21st century, we can see that our life - especially teens' life- is dominated by media. Pew Research Center said on their website, that 65% of adult in America used social media in 2015. This is a huge percentage compare to 7% in 2005. Not only the total percentage of people using social media, there are more interesting data on the website.
Here is the link of the page.
As technology of electronic devices developed, it helped the growth of the use of media. From then, a new type of addiction has appeared. It's MEDIA ADDICTION which comes out to be disorders and diseases, such as internet addiction disorder and social network addiction. These people cannot live without media and their prioritize media even more than their life.
McLuhan's prediction?
Herbert Marshall McLuhan, who was a Canadian professor, philosopher, and public intellectual, had said about this phenomenon. This is one of his quotes."We shape our tools, and
afterwards our tools shape us."
It shows our current society very well. We invented the concept of social media, and we developed. Social media has been shaped as our tools. However, by the time when we looked back our lives, the media was shaping and even controlling us. We follow as what social media tells us. We follow the way that others think.
We should live our own life, not others' life.
As Marshall McLuhan said, our created tools are shaping us. Our tool, social media is being more powerful than the past and it affects our life a lot. Our life has been chained by social media and has followed the things which social media say 'cool'.
Now, it's time to get out of the chain of social media. LIVE YOUR OWN LIFE. NOT OTHER'S LIFE!
@Waelucination. "10 Ways to Cure Your Social Media Addiction." Scoop Empire. Wael Abdul Aziz, 11 Feb. 2014. Web. 06 Nov. 2016.
"Marshall McLuhan." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 07 Nov. 2016.
Mueller, Walt. "Digital Media: Screwing Up or Strengthening Adolescent Spirituality?" Center for Parent/youth Understanding. Walt Mueller, 22 May 2014. Web. 7 Nov. 2016.
Mueller, Walt. "Digital Media: Screwing Up or Strengthening Adolescent Spirituality?" Center for Parent/youth Understanding. Walt Mueller, 22 May 2014. Web. 7 Nov. 2016.
I like where you took this quote, right into the realm of addiction. I can see how technology is shaping today's students vs the students I was teaching at the beginning of my career 15 years ago.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, social media is controlling our life through various way and life will also be harsh if we don't have social media. As we created the convenience, the convenience also changes us.
ReplyDeletei really like the link you shared! those graphs and datas make me feel nervous...i realized that i waste too much time on internet every day. sometimes i was trying to do some assignments, i just cannot help to check Facebook and also go to some other websites that can't hep with my homework...i do wasted a lot of time on internet...
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