Media Literacy

Being literate doesn't mean just knowing how to read or write anymore. Ever since humans began to rely on media to obtain information, the definition of "literacy" has broadened. Our communication skills have advanced, and our ability to think critically has taken new routes. Our right brains have become more expressive; with learning media literacy our creative juices have filled the glasses of thought process in interesting ways.

We all have diets. No, not those diets that always fail to work like cutting out carbs, adding more vegetables, and absolutely no dessert. We maintain "mediated diets". This can be described as the daily intake of media. Like any diet, over-indulgence can create bad habits. Like the Spice Girls said: "too much of something is bad enough", we begin to over-dose on media drugs. These addictions can apply to any form of media such as the Internet: (Facebook, MSN, celebrity gossip sites), Television: (programs, movies, celebrity documentaries), Telephones: (text messaging, incoming and outgoing calls), and many other forms. If we do not control our daily intake of media, the media consumes us, and we become robotic mediated slaves.

Being media literate is a method of treating media addiction. If you understand the concepts of media, the position media puts you in, and the power media has over society, then you can grasp the knowledge you need to analyze and evaluate media practices. My life is mediated daily. From the moment I open my eyes, I am immediately reading the clock to see if it's time to get up, or if I can squeeze some more sleep into my life. If we are looking at the clock every second of the day, we lose touch with our surroundings because we are so concentrated on those ticking hands. If we ignore the clock for just a little bit, we give ourselves more time to think about other things. This is the same for just about every kind of technology. If we just stop checking our cell phones every 2 and a half minutes, we can concentrate on more important things, and then before you know it, at the end of the day, you'll end up with a pile of messages you can get excited about. If we take a break from Facebook for a day, we learn to appreciate it so much more when we go back to it.

This post seems quite like a fantasy land on a far away planet that only wizards and leprechauns have access to. Even thinking about this from my perspective sounds impossible. Taking a break from Facebook? Not checking my phone? Not being able to follow those tiny ticking hands on the face of time? That's all I do all day! Perhaps I am not yet media literate, but knowing that you can learn to be media literate sends rainbows of comfort to my brain.