Priorities. BYU. Google photos. Spotify. Kindle. Chick-fil-a. Instagram. These are the top apps on my phone. What I spend all of my time on. From what I've seen, it doesn't look like this is uncommon.  Sometimes, this o vertakes my time for other things - when I scroll during institute, order food while my roommate is talking to me, dance party instead of meal prep, or do anything else besides my homework.  I noticed my habits were stimulating a lack of motivation in studying and causing the time to do anything even remotely productive to double. Not all was bad... but there is a need to see what was "good, better, and best". I had been budgeting out time and was stressed because there were never enough hours in the day to do what I needed to get done. I didn't realize how much time was being wasted. Trying to do the "best" things, I started to tune out and later turn off the noise (of notifications, stopping all music, avoiding any/all distractions) a...

  Impressionable.    In one of my previous blog post I talked about how impacted we are by media- it defines us within our personal experiences and is what we identify with.    It's not if you're learning, but what.    Thankfully, media has been regulated over time to help promote learning and education: PBS Kids- has children TV programs https://pbskids.org/ PBS Learning Media- has classes that match curriculum for Pre-K up to the end of high school  https://utah.pbslearningmedia.org/ National Geographic- has shows/games to promote exploration and science   https://www.nationalgeographic.com/ Various online games to help learn concepts- https://www.coolmathgames.com/ https://www.abcmouse.com/abc/ https://www.funbrain.com/ There's a lot to learn, and as we know, not everything we should see will be included in the media. However, there's a lot we do have access t...

Gaming.  I've never been a big gamer so I wanted to expose myself to media I hadn't really encountered before. Gamers get a bad rap- sitting down all day staring at a screen, sometimes forgetting to eat good meals, staying up late to finish one single accomplishment... It sounds horribly unhealthy until you see the parallels between that lifestyle they live and that of college students.  My motivation is to get good grades (or sometimes just pass the class), but what are they getting out of this experience?  I was astounded to learn of real-world benefits that gaming can provide. A much more positive take than what I was anticipating.  Surprisingly, gaming has many upsides (Granic et al., 2014) : Concentration and memory recall tactics Problem-solving/critical thinking skills Increased creativity Social/interpersonal skills Evidently this will be dependent on which games are played.  However, video games aren't all bad. They're not all good either though. It wo...

Underrepresentation.  Within our media. Within the groups that create our media.  One story being told over and over- and it isn't even a full one.  Our overlapping lives aren't being presented as overlapping, but rather are shown as very separate and some even shown as irrelevant. Some aren't even shown.  We are so impressionable when it comes to media- it becomes what we identify with. For me this comes through books. I was reviewing my childhood books the other day after we had a lecture on what "readers" look like. I took a mental inventory of the books I had been raised on, but also a mental inventory of how they raised me.  Myopically. These stories were just that- a singular representation of how I had grown to see the world. I learned that I didn't have as wide of a scope as I had thought, and noted the danger in such a viewpoint. I found that not only is underrepresentation prevalent in my media, but also with those who had made it (graphs below)....

  Music. I thought my media usage was fairly decent- for a college student that is. When you hear about excess media consumption, if you’re like me, your first thoughts tend to go to social media. I even did a media chart, mapping out my daily use (chart below). This made me feel like I was doing great (obviously there's always room for improvement). What I didn’t realize I needed to include was music - really the most used apps on my phone are Spotify/Apple Music/Pandora.   I always have it on- in the background while I study, blasting in the car with my windows down, in my earbuds on campus so I can avoid conversation… my media usage totals went up significantly when I added music. My music isn’t super unclean music or what used to be considered “degenerative” and it isn’t promoting things I morally disagree with… So why does it matter?   Well I realized that most people want music for entertainment, but I was using mine as a filler - not allowing room...

Screen time.  When I think about how much time I spend staring at TVs or devices in general I get concerned, so it makes sense that parents would be worried about media usage with their children. After learning the facts and opinions from multiple sources, I had the opportunity to interview my sister (since I don't have kids) and got her opinion.  My sister currently has three children- three and under- and works full-time. She also had concerns about raising her children in a media-saturated world, especially regarding television, noting that exposure was harder to eliminate and she herself slipped into habits of media usage ( Radesky 2015). Despite using TV as an electronic babysitter when she has work meetings, she still manages their use of media using a multitude of methods:           No tablets or phones           TV cannot be on for more than two hours in one day           They set aside...