Media has had an immense effect on my life as well as the lives of nearly everyone else on the planet. No matter where you may be media will always find you and that is the way it had been for nearly 16 years. Media has greatly affected my day-to-day well being and I feel as though it is effecting it in increasingly negative ways. In my opinion I would assume that I consume an average of 500 ads per day, that is an estimate and the real number could be much higher, from my computer, phone, and on the television. Seeing this many advertisements in a single day has absolutely shocked me and it has driven me to try and stay of my devices to decrease my ad intake. I would say seeing 500 ads in a single day has effected my life in a negative way because I have began to notice that I am slightly intrigued to all the personalized advertisements sent my way. Now that I have learned about the issue in school and have begun to realize the fault in my media intake I hope to change from my ways of distraction and attempt to narrow down on what I happen to be focusing on whether it be a game or homework. When companies send me personalized advertisements I have began to realize their gambit. When pitched these products I am often entertained by the fact that they wasted programming in an attempt to make me buy something off of an ad. Ever since I have began learning about the truth behind all media this semester I have found that there are serious issues in ads that I would never have noticed before. I have already began to ween myself off of my devices or at the least i have been attempting to block out the ads from my field of vision or I find a way to close them to better focus on my initial task. To have the skill of media literacy has helped me immensely and is a necessity for anyone and everyone who wishes to have and actual understanding of the images and ad campaigns they are seeing every day. Media literacy is an important part of analyzing, accessing, and evaluating of media in all of its forms. This idea ties in nicely with the importance of being an educated consumer, meaning you need to know before you blow all of your money on a product forced upon you and a product that may very well not be something you actually need. I am grateful that I kept logs of my media usage and the effects of media on others because I was able to better understand the true negatives of my exposure to media in massive amounts. I am proud now that I am trying to "change my ways" and shake off some of my current media consumption. My overall thoughts are that everyone needs to be well educated to better understand the ads being thrown at them and media companies need to cool it wit their campaigns seeing as they often have little to no effect on the target audience.
