Taking a Look Back on Media



Because this is my last media blog, I wanted to revisit the effect of media on my life, and kind of write a concluding post to end my blogs on this website. From watching videos in class, and other experiences that I've had in life over these past months, my perception of media has changed dramatically.
In the beginning of this blog, I went into it thinking that media was for the most part all bad and that it was all toxic. The documentaries in class reinforced this. Most of them highlighted how much time we spend on our phones and how it's not healthy for us to be online all the time. I definitely think that there are negatives to media in general, but I think that if we look collectively at the effect that media has good and bad, using everything that I've experienced in my life up to this point, the good definitely outweigh the negatives.
An example of a positive happened last weekend. I went to the regional meet for the NCAA D1 Track and Field Championships. It was so amazing because I have been following runners all over social media for years and now I was actually going to see them race in person. I was able to take pictures with some of the runners and talk to them in person. It was an experience that I will never forget and I will cherish for years to come. If it hadn't been for social media, I would've had no idea who these people were and I wouldn't have been able to reach out and talk to them. Later that night I posted my pictures with them on Instagram and they even commented. I was ecstatic the entire night and it made my entire week. This pure joy and happiness I got from this experience I would not replace for anything. Social media has introduced me to my role models and my heroes. And because of media, I was able to "know" who they were.
The point of this post was just to point out that even though we may sometimes feel like we are surrounded with all of these negative facts and statistics about social media, it is important to understand social media does bring people together.

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