My Media Diet

	READING	TV	INTERNET
FRIDAY	NONE	2HRS	3HRS
SATURDAY	NONE	1HR	2HRS
SUNDAY	1HR	2HRS	4HRS
MONDAY	30MINS	NONE	4HRS
TUESDAY	2HRS	2.5HRS	5HRS

The five days I recorded my media consumption from Friday, May 5^th to Tuesday May 10^th and over these 5 days I recorded that I read 3 and a half hours, watched 7 and a half hours and have been online for 16 hours. All the reading I did over these 5 days has all been from text books and class assigned articles and all the readings were done from Sunday through Tuesday. I don’t personally own a TV so all the TV I watch is at my friend’s house and all we watch really are the NBA playoffs, San Jose Sharks games and movies from Netflix. I actually surprised myself by only watching 7.5 hours of TV. The internet easily dominated my media consumption by recording a whopping 16 hours. I feel like this number is really high because when working on homework, eating or hanging out with friends pretty much most of the time. The sites I spend most of my time on facebook, twitter, youtube, Hulu and Cucirca. I feel like I am always checking my facebook and twitter and because I don’t have a TV I spend a lot of time watching shows like House and Family Guy on Hulu.com. The days I read the most were on Sunday through Tuesday because I was with my friends over the weekend and wasn’t in the mood to study. The days I watched TV were the days that there were games on TV and on Monday I didn’t watch TV because I watched that game on the internet when I was in the library. I used the internet a lot except for Saturday because I didn’t have it with me most of the day but I was using my phones internet for most of the day. Compared to others my age I think that my media consumption is pretty low mainly because I don’t watch too much TV and even though I use the computer a lot I believe I would be in the lower half of our class in internet usage. When it comes to the reading that I have done over these five days are extremely low but I think most students reading habits are similar to mine and this says a lot about American culture as a whole. The fear that this media trend is making the youth less intelligent than previous generations maybe true because the less time we spend studying or just leisurely reading and when we do decide to we are multitasking. It is pretty startling to see how much time I spend reading compared to the time I spend online but most likely I don’t think much is going to really change in the future.

Can you really multitask?

With almost every college student owning smart phones and laptops an issue that arises is students have so many distractions that divert them from their school work. Why do work when you can be doing so many other things? And most students will respond this question by saying why not do it all at the same time? Me personally I could not remember the last time I have done school work without having my facebook and twitter open, my phone out and music playing all at the same time. At times I even multi task with my homework doing multiple assignments at the same time. I would say I am a good multi tasker, I think I could focus just as well with music on and social networking sites out maybe even better because I will get antsy without them because ill constantly be thinking about who is trying to get in contact with me right now. In the Stanford study they performed an experiment on students that believed they were perfect multi taskers and they were put to memory tests while multi tasking as also without it at they found that these students worked a lot slower and had less memory when multi tasking compared to when they worked without distractions. Is our belief that we can multi task really hurting us not just in school but as a generation and is this a trend we should worry about in future? In my opinion I think this is just a hiccup we have to experience because of change. When we began to switch to written language from the world dominated by word of mouth there was a drop off in memorization skills of the people but it was needed to move forward and I believe this is exactly what is happening now it is necessary for progression.

Technology in your classrooms

After watching Digital Nation in class the other day it opened up my eyes to a lot of things relating to all the changes happening in this world because of innovation. One of the ways that technology was making huge changes in this world is in the classroom. In the movie the example they showed was a middle school that required all the students to own a Macbook. Before this laptop requirement was implemented the school was really far behind in reading as well as math but after a year with the laptops they were back where they needed to be. But the kids also were talking about this being a distraction in class because they would play games in class, check their facebook, take pictures and not pay attention when they felt the material was not relevant to them. So this leads to the question is this the future if education? A mother of one of the students said that the reason he enrolled him was because when her son is going to enter the work force he is going to have to be able to proficient on a computer because technology is the future. In my opinion I agree with this because there is no denying that technology is only becoming a bigger part of everyone’s daily lives. At this point it is basically a requirement to have a laptop at Santa Clara University because I could not imagine anyone doing well in class without one with all the papers we need to write, all the notes and power points you have to download. In this class were making posts, and writing on discussion boards daily, it would be so difficult to keep up without a laptop. I think in a few years every student is going to need a computer for school starting at a really early age.

Technology and Social Interaction

As bad as I want to say that social networking and our addiction to our cell phones has not made us worse in normal face to face interaction but I feel that it has become obvious that it has. My parents have been telling me for years but I never really was aware of some of the habits and tendencies that I do without thinking. Since I have been taking this class and doing my media diet log it has hit me that I am constantly on my phone, I’ve caught myself pulling out my phone mid-conversation with my parents, at dinners, my brothers graduation and it keeps me from getting sleep when I am in bed. I could say that I have had relationships that were based completely on facebook, like classmates that I felt comfortable talking to online but when I see them in class no words are exchanged and if there is it is extremely awkward and I know most people my age could identify with these kinds of relationships. I believe that people feel a lot more comfortable online because you have time to react to questions that might catch you off guard, people cannot see your true emotions and you can easily cover how you feel about an issue and also you can log off anytime which makes for a very loose conversation which in a way killed our conversation skills. I'm all for meeting people online and if you feel your relationship is strong enough to last in the real world more power to you but honestly I would think that less than 50 percent of those relationships could last just because people could keep up a façade about themselves online but once you’re in person it a lot harder. When most people use facebook or twitter they are using it to connect with friends that they have in the real world and maybe will have a few relationships with people they have not met personally but when most of the people you are communicating with are made in virtual worlds like World of Warcraft or Second Life it might be a problem because in my opinion you are more likely to have communication issues. I do not have anything against these games but I feel most of their users have problems communicating in reality so they feel more comfortable online. Our generation is beginning to realize that our social interaction is based too much online and needs to go back to face to face interactions. Countries such as Japan even have Gaming Rescue Camps to get kids addicted to gaming back to reality and in my opinion this might be a little drastic, I believe that when people are aware of their social networking interactions that will fix a big chuck of the problem.

Social Networking and Privacy

I never really notice how much time and how social networking is to my life until I actually sat down and thought about it to write this blogging assignment. Every time I have a spare minute I pull out my phone to check my text messages, twitter and my facebook. I often check it so often that there has been no change from the last time I checked it 2 minutes ago. Whenever I am on the computer my Google chrome tabs are filled with my facebook and twitter, most likely in conversation with someone or multiple people all on different social networks. It would hard for me to actually quantify because my social network intake varies from a quick second check under my desk in class to losing track of time and finding myself on facebook for hours in the wee hours of the morning. When you look at the cultural movement to social networking and constant access to news there are pluses as well as minuses. As a whole I feel that this movement towards our addiction to constant media has its pitfalls but overall I believe it is a positive to have information always at your fingertips. Though I know my opinions might be considered biased because I grew up in these times and I could not possibly imagine my life without all of these gadgets, but when watching films like Digital Nation it shows examples of teachers using laptops in class to connect with their students and they all respond better to this way of learning, one teacher even described trying to take way technology from their students is like taking away their oxygen. I also do understand the other side of the argument because I do believe people that grew up in this age like me do not feel as comfortable reacting with others as well as generations before us. As well as other things like reading or doing physical activities are not done as often because we are constantly tied down with our social networking. Privacy has also taken a huge blow which I have personal experiences from sharing personal information about relationships that I definitely would not do again but I believe if you think before you post things you should be fine. When you are smart with your postings and pictures, security is never an issue.