Thinking and Writing About Digital Media

As a Millennial, I spent my formative years trusting that the answers to any of life's questions could be found on a computer. This belief intensified as I entered adulthood and obtained a smartphone, meaning that the endless resources of digital media all fit in my pocket. I love the stories told through movies and long form television, so I am often drawn to Netflix and similar sites. I use Facebook to remain semi-informed on the lives of friends who live far away and the current events posted to my news feed (the only source of news that I consume, as I avoid newspapers and news sites generally) and Instagram to stay connected to my family, who all post there regularly. I turn to Pinterest often for creative ideas and new recipes.  

On the whole, I believe that my interaction with digital media is about satisfaction. If I want to know something, I only need to google it or ask Siri. Often, I won't read the entire article or page that is suggested. I scan through until I find out what to know and then I move on. For this reason I loathe news videos--they talk too slowly and I can't skip to the essential information. If I want to alleviate boredom, I usually open Facebook or Instagram and allow my mind to shut down a little as I scroll through other people's lives. Since a large portion of my friends on Facebook are people I knew in high school or people who friend requested me after my mission in Honduras, I don't know exactly who most of them are anyway. I would minimize my friend count, but removing friends en masse is the most inconvenient function on Facebook. My husband also taught me his trick of opening the "Videos You May Like" tab on Instagram, which also serves for temporary mindlessness. It worries me that what I require to be satisfied is a high mental stimulus in order to produce a very low mental response, like I am practicing shutting my brain off. Yet that seems to be the goal of a majority of the digital media I have encountered. 

This said, I am grateful for a religious upbringing that encouraged personal integrity, and has enabled me to avoid media that would prove detrimental. I know that my students' media consumption will probably be greater than mine, so I hope to help them establish their own standards for what they will allow on their phone or computer screen and what they will scroll past. Moreover, I hope to help my students understand the practice of meta-cognition. As I become more dependent on digital media, I lose my ability to focus on real life conversations, like college lectures or even conversations with friends. I predict this problem will only worsen for my students. I hope to help them to put their phones down and interact more with their physical circumstances than with the virtual world.