I really enjoyed this FYOS class.  When I picked this class I didn’t even know what it was about, I just knew that it was right down the hall from my next class so that’s why I chose it.  I got really lucky though because this class was actually about something that interested me.  Something that I think could be talked more about in next year’s class is the bias that certain media industries have, or how to create a more positive environment on different social media since that seems to be a really big problem in our world today.

After recording my media usage last week, I decided to record my usage again this week to see if I would still use media just as much as I did last week.  In short, the answer is yes.

I chose to log my media on Wednesday, which is the same day I chose to record last week.  I only have one class on Wednesdays, so I figured I wouldn’t use media too much.  Another reason I chose another Wednesday  is because last week I had a test that I was studying for all day, so I decided to see if I would use media in the same amount when I didn’t have anything to study for.  My expectations going into this were that I would use media a lot less this time, or I would use media the same amount but just for stupid things and not at all work related; however, I still used media mostly for school work.

A few things didn’t change at all during this day.  I listened to music for about an hour and a half while at the gym and then watched the same two programs on tv at the end of my day (I do this every Wednesday-it’s the only constant I have in my ridiculously crazy life).  But even without having a test or anything to study for or a real need to be doing school work, I found myself doing work any second I could.  I almost feel like I’m afraid of wasting my time if I’m not doing something, so any chance that I get I try to get ahead on homework or papers that need to be done.  With Wednesday being a day I don’t have much class time, I have a lot of time to just start math or chem homework or do my English papers.  I don’t really feel like there’s anything that I need to change about my media use since I mostly use it for school; I even deleted Instagram off of my phone to see if I found myself having withdrawals, and I didn’t even remember that I deleted it until a few days later when I was trying to show my friend someone I was talking about.  So overall, I don’t really have a feeling that I need to use media less, I’m definitely using it a lot, but I also feel like there’s not much I can do about it

I chose to log my media use on the days that I thought I would use media the most.  I was also expecting to have some sort of revelation on how I was on my phone way too much or that media was somehow getting in the way of my life.  However, after logging what I was using media for, I realized most of my media use was necessary, not just mindless scrolling.

On Wednesday, I used media pretty much from the moment I woke up until I went to sleep.  When I woke up and throughout the entire day, I checked my phone.  In the morning it was mostly to see the notifications I missed while I was asleep, and the throughout the rest of the day I was continuously checking my phone whenever a notification popped up, but I almost always had a purpose in checking my phone.  I was never on it just to waste time or because I was bored, I actually needed it, whether I was checking email or texts.  I also had a chemistry test the next day, so about 4 and a half hours consisted of me going over old power points and practice tests on elc.  Wednesday nights are also the time that I watch tv (other than Saturday football) so the last two hours of the day I was finally able to relax and watch Survivor and American Horror Story.

Surprisingly, on Saturday, I feel like I used media a lot less.  I started watching college football at around 1, and it was on until the end of the Georgia game, but I wasn’t actively on media as much as I was during weekdays. The only times that I was actively using media were while I did math homework and then bought a book that I needed for my English class; I also had to complete an online orientation for work, but after that I just laid in bed and watched tv.

So while I used media almost continuously throughout the two days i logged, I don’t feel as though I had any other option or like I could really change how much media I use.  Almost all of my media use was for school or work, and when it wasn’t something that was necessary, like tv or music, I was using it as a way to relax and feel like I wasn’t having work.

I’ve actually googled myself before, mostly because I was bored in one of my classes, but I still decided to google myself again to see if anything has changed.  Everything is all pretty much the same.  Prezis are the only things that come up that I have directly posted, everything else is pictures of my swim team and pictures of my grandfather’s church; only one picture of myself comes up, and that’s from my bio on swim team’s website.  There is a website that comes up that lists my entire family tree and all of our addresses and phone numbers (its awful).  I asked my mom about it when I first saw it and apparently my dad’s uncle created it a while ago; no one really knows why and no one is happy about it but no one knows what to do about it.   It’s not up to date, but my family has the same phone number as when it was posted to we occasionally get calls from people looking to get in contact with other family members, and we just act like we have no idea who those people are.  Everything else that shows up are pictures of my swim team and pictures of the staff of my grandfather’s church because my name is in his pastor biography.

I don’t think there are any misconceptions about me that anyone would get from looking at my social media.  I rarely post, and my Instagram is pretty boring, but I definitely don’t put out a false image of myself.  Before this post, I’ve gone through and deleted or untagged myself from several pictures just because i felt like i looked awful in them.  It wasn’t that I thought that the pictures I were in were necessarily inappropriate because I’ve always been really conscious on not taking pictures that could come back to haunt me; they were just really unflattering pictures.  Now if you google me or even look in the pictures I’ve been tagged in, you’ll just know that I’m a swim coach for Dacula Dolphins and that my grandpa is a pastor.

While reading this article, I wasn’t as surprised or disgusted in the ways that different social media companies use to hook us as what I thought I would be.  I’ve always felt that constantly being on your phone or laptop probably wasn’t the healthiest, but at the same time I feel as though we don’t have any other choice; this has made me pretty numb to all of the crazy things that come out against social media apps or smart phones in general.

I don’t necessarily agree that apps should be trying to make us become addicted to their products, but every marketer is essentially doing the same thing.  Fast food, cigarettes, and now social media  markets all want their products to be used by the largest population that they can reach, but so do organic food distributors.  All markets are going to sell their products in ways that appeal to the buyer; they all make the buyer feel as though they want more or can’t live without their product, and this manipulation shouldn’t be acceptable to anyone, no matter what the product is.

I haven’t experienced manipulation by social media firsthand, but I have definitely seen the negatives that staring at a screen can have on someone.  I’m constantly checking my phone, whether its for snapchat, Instagram, or anything else; I’m pretty much always on my phone, but I don’t feel as though there’s a way for me to just decide to quit using my phone or social media.  When social media becomes the only way that you have to keep up to date on school, work, and friends, you don’t have much of a choice other than to constantly check your phone.  I suffer from migraines, and they’re often triggered by extended amounts of time of my laptop (writing papers is the worst), but I’ve never thought, “I can just not use my laptop or phone, and all of my problems will go away!” because of how much society has changed to depend on the use of social media.

I interviewed one of my close friends, who I thought would have a very different experience than me when it came to social media.  He is very social and is almost always with a lot of friends, so I figured he would be pretty active on social media, but he tends to keep things pretty private when it comes to sharing parts of his life with others.  It turned out that we are actually pretty similar in almost aspect in regard to social media.

He checks it less often than I do, but not by too much.  We both tend to check our social media when we’re bored or feel like we have nothing to do; however, he’s a lot busier than what I am, so his time that he has to check it is less than the time that I have.  He said that he definitely checks his social media multiple times everyday, but that he posts very little, if ever (he has a total of 2 Instagram posts).  Similarly, I check my social media a lot more than I actually post on it.

We also both keep our different forms of social media as private as we can.  Not only do we both set the privacy settings, but we also try to manage who we allow to follow our accounts.  He said he knows almost every person that he allows to follow all of his forms of social media, but that he does follow a few celebrities or accounts that he doesn’t know personally.  On the other hand, I don’t follow a single person that I do not know personally or have some sort of knowledge of who they are.  For the most part though, we are both very similar in our attitudes toward privacy.

Where our behaviors differ the most is when it comes to the types of social media that we use.  I solely have and use Instagram and snap chat while he uses Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and snap chat.  He said that his social media use has definitely increased as he’s gotten older; he started with just Facebook, but once high school hit, he was then into almost every form of social media so that he could keep up with friends who no longer go to school with him (our schools split in middle school).  I never really cared about social media or keeping up with people that I went to elementary school with.

I was never that big into social media, mostly because I just see it as something really exhausting trying to maintain.  I check my Instagram feed pretty much daily, but I very rarely post because I never have think, “oh this is a great picture that everyone would want to see!” I also see how annoying everyone else is with their social media posts that I am so afraid of becoming remotely like that. I also see how negatively it can effect people when they really don’t have a filter.  Also, my dad works for Comcast and whenever they’re hiring new employees, the first thing they check is the potential employee’s social media, if there is anything remotely questionable (racist/sexist/drugs) they are automatically ruled as unhireable, and it’s likely that you won’t be told that it was because of something you posted four years ago, so all of this has left a bad taste in my mouth about social media. However, I still check my social media so that I can keep up with the latest drama and see what other people are posting.

In the article about “Terms and Conditions”, it made a good point about people posting for approval or satisfaction from others.  Even as bad as it sounded with people posting about funerals just to get more likes or more of a reaction from their followers, I still found it to be very true.  When someone that I followed posted a picture of himself crying after his great grandma died, I just kind of sat back and was so confused on why someone would ever feel the need to post a picture of themselves crying. But this is also similar to how people constantly post way too much about their relationships or breakups.  It’s just a way for people to get more likes on their posts, and they can feel better about themselves because they got a fake “oh my goodness I’m so sorry” or “y’all are couple goals!!!” comment on their posts.

I feel as though the media ecology of UGA and my former high school are very similar.  One of the first things I noticed was how similar eLC is to what my high school used, MYeClass. The set up of the two websites are pretty much exactly the same, and they are used in the same way and frequency at both UGA and my high school.  My high school teachers would post notes or PowerPoints onto their page, so students could access them outside of the school, just like the professors here do.

GroupMe is also a form of media that was used often at my high school and here in college.  In high school, I mostly used it as a way of keeping in touch with the different clubs that I was in, and the teachers actually used it too as a way of communicating with us; however, here, it’s used as more of a study tool or to talk to people I’m doing a group project on, so the professors haven’t caught on to using it yet.  I still use it just as often as I did in high school; the reasons have just changed a little.

One thing that is definitely different between the two  ecologies is the absence of the smart board at UGA.  My math and science teachers were mostly the ones who used them, and I never thought much about them.  I didn’t think, “Oh this is saving so much time and making learning so much easier!” I just went with it.  But when I’m sitting in my math class here, I find myself getting really bored and almost agitated because I feel like so much time is being wasted as the professor writes down almost every single word he says, as opposed to my high school where the teachers could prepare a PowerPoint, and project it onto the Smart Board, and then write any additional notes they wanted onto the Smart Board itself.

The essay was 100% accurate when it came to the fact that no one has ever really been taught how to write an email.  I know that whenever I’m emailing professors, I’m always nervous about whether I’m being too casual or too formal just because no one has ever told us “this is right” or “this is wrong.”  However, I don’t think that students and professors have completely different viewpoints regarding email; I just think students were never told how to approach email, and they struggle to understand the formality necessary, especially since this changes with everyone they talk to.

I think the reason why universities and schools mostly use email as a way of communicating is because it is safe to assume everyone has access to email.  Some schools have tried to communicate through texts (remind101), but this only worked for reminders or one way conversations because students could not respond to these messages; they would have to email their teachers if they had any concerns.  Email is the best form of communication we have right now when it comes to contacting our professors, even if it is one of the older medias we have.  It’s simple, free, and everyone pretty much has it.  It doesn’t cost anything to send an email as opposed to texts, and it is something that people are already accustomed to and have access to (the school provides it in most university settings) as opposed to apps or social media that some people don’t have or want to create.

There are several forms of legacy media that I’ve used and still use in my life.  The main one being books.  From the moment i was conceived to now I’m still reading books (my dad used to read to me while I was still in the womb).  I don’t feel like they’ll ever completely disappear or be replaced by eBooks or the internet mostly because of the “sentimental” value that they have.  Physical books can be passed down or held onto for generations; my family has kept my dad’s children’s bible forever even though its falling apart, and I’m pretty sure my brother tried to eat it when he was a baby, but it still sits on our bookshelf, along with a lot of other books we read as children.

Today, most the books that I am reading are textbooks that I’ve been assigned, but I still prefer physical books over online textbooks.  I feel like they allow for a better way of learning and retaining information as opposed to reading information off of a screen.

The other form of legacy media that had a huge impact on my life was VHS tapes.  Growing up, that’s all I would watch, and I could sit there and watch the same movie again and again if I wanted to.  Every Disney movie and sesame street movie you can think of is somewhere in a basket in my parents’ closet.  There’s still times now when someone will ask, “Have you seen (any classic movie)?” and my mom will respond, “Yeah!!! We have it on VHS!” and then she’ll sadly come to the realization that it really doesn’t matter because we don’t even have a VHS player anymore.