Feelings
Oh, is this ever an issue facing us today! People are consuming mass media ALL DAY LONG! IT LITERALLY IS OUR WORLD AND MANY PEOPLE'S LIVES. They spend from morning until evening texting, surfing the web, blogging, updating facebook, watching YouTube, using computers at work and school, e-mailing, calling friends, reading magazines, reading the latest book, watching sit-coms, listening to talk radio, going to the movies, listening to their ipods, and more. People don't know how to live anymore!
While I agree that media is for the most part a good thing (in that we have progressed and advanced in miraculous ways), my main concern is that people don't know how to balance media consumption. People are forgetting how to live. I feel like with all the means of mass media that we have around us, it is easy to be preoccupied with one thing - ourselves. Everyone is caught up with informing and entertaining themselves, and many have forgotten that other people exist. It's like we can shut ourselves in our own little world and tune everybody and everything else out.
I feel like kids don't know how to communicate with adults anymore, or even hold a decent conversation with one of their friends. My little brothers use between 10,000-20,000 texts each, per month! I remember hearing that and thinking to myself, "What do they do all day, text?!" We see this focus on self and this distancing from the world as we walk on our very own campus at Brigham Young University. I hate walking by someone and saying something, and realizing that they have something in their ear and they can't hear me!
I would like to do an experiment walking from the Wilkinson Center to the Spencer W. Kimball tower and just count how many people have phones in hand, or phones or ipods in their ears. I would like to count how many people in the library are not only on their laptops, but are also listening to music or using their cell phones. The fact is - media is consuming is!
Facebook is another issue! For example, while Facebook is not necessarily a bad thing, too much of anything isn't good. People spend their lives updating their "lives" on facebook. It's like we've all connected online, but we don't know how to connect in person. What about going and visiting a friend, calling them up, or going on a walk? What about the good old-fashioned lunch date to catch up with a friend instead of just passing them quickly and hearing them say, "Look me up on Facebook."
Most media is good. It is helping our world advance in phenomenal ways, and helping the Church and kingdom of God flourish. However, people need to be wise in the media they consume. Less really is better. An old poem I once memorized was called, "A Time to Talk," by Robert Frost.
"When a friend calls to me from the road, and slows his horse to a meaning walk, I don't stand still and look around on all the hills I haven't hoed, and shout from where I am, What is it? No, not as there is a time to talk. I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground, Blade-end up and five feet tall, And plod: I go up to the stone wall For a friendly visit."
I like this poem because of what it teaches us. While the setting is a scene from many years ago, it applies to us today. Our lives are busy and we have so much going on. A typical reaction to a friend's passing on the road might be to shout out quickly, "What is it?" Not really caring to know. But if we understand what life is really about, we will thrust in our hoe blade-end up (meaning we'll be gone awhile) and we'll go visit. The stone wall is an image of a place to sit and really visit, a talk for longer than a second. Today media is replacing this type of conversation. Too many don't have time to talk.
Another downfall of too much media is that it is overwhelming to try and keep in touch with everyone. If you have 900 friends on Facebook, you can't possible keep up on what is going on in their lives and send them messages, without spending all day every day on Facebook.
What might happen or what is happening because of this over-consumption?
-Children are losing the ability to play
-People don't get outside anymore
-Neighbors don't take walks around the block
-People stay inside
-People don't go anywhere (they can do everything from home)
-Less interaction within the community (you don't go to the bank anymore, so you don't interact with the teller. You don't go out to eat, so you don't interact with the waitress.) Now, this may be extreme, but we are spending more and more time consumed with media and less and less time actually living life. If being online all day is living life, well then, I'm worried about the future. :)
Examples of it already happening
This lifestyle is already happening and we see it all around us.
I am always disgusted when I hear grown men (19-25) talk about staying up all night playing Halo or Starcraft. It is sad to hear my friends say, "I've got to see the fifth and sixth season, I just finished the first four." I think to myself - who has time to watch that many episodes of anything? Don't you have better things to do with your life?! Yes, we can see that this is already happening around us.
The funny thing is that the media we watch depicts others filling their lives with non-stop media. We weren't met to multi-task by talking on the phone, texting, and listening to music while we are driving. We need to slow down, focus, and learn to talk to other people face-to-face. :) The world will be a lot better off if we return to the post-industrialization ideals of family time, good neighbors and tight knit communities.
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