Reflection

Before this semester, I never really realized or acknowledged how much media has impacted my life, and the messages that have come with it. I, sadly, consume a lot of media whether it be Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube or Netflix. This made me susceptible to the many messages that went along with this. Sometimes when I get bored I scroll through the Instagram explore page where there is a lot of different types of posts. I started to realize after this unit that I unconsciously let these ideals influence my life, where I have noticed that some things make me feel insecure about myself and feel like I am not good enough for I don't have enough/ good enough friends. This feeling I get from consuming media so much made me even more vulnerable to the persuasion of brands and their ads that appeal to my insecurities and promise to fill this "void" with their products. Now that I know the many techniques that these companies use, I have become a lot more cautious and aware of these techniques and skeptical of if what the company is telling us, the consumers, is the truth and if their product will really fulfill what they say it will. Whenever I see an ad on TV, I can't just sit there and watch like a brain-dead zombie, I actually analyze it in my head and see what they're trying to say and how they deliver their message. I've been trying to ween myself off of media, or at least tell myself to, and be more aware of what I am consuming instead of trusting whatever I hear from the company/ anything online and believe it to be true without truly looking at it. I have chosen to act and think like this because for most of my life, I used to blindly accept whatever I saw as the truth without the mere thought that the company could be lying in order to get me to buy their product and make money. Being an educated consumer is very important because if you listen to when media is trying to convince you that you are lonely, unsuccessful, powerless, loser with no friends and the only way to become a wealthy, prominent person in this world where everyone loves you is to buy their product. If you aren't aware of this as a consumer than you can easily be tricked into buying a coffee machine when you don't even like coffee or need another coffee machine, but because you let these companies make you persuade yourself into buying their product, they win and you lose and you'd never realize it. The thoughts of "maybe I do need this pair of shoes" or "maybe these clothes will make me fit in", are what these companies want you to do. Overall, I have learned so much from this course and in keeping these journals, I can recognize and analyze the media that consumes me in my daily life and prevent it from taking over my life completely.