Group 5 STEM 7

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“The Good and the Bad: How Social Media Affected Me as a Gen Z Individual”

Let us educate everyone, especially the digital natives of this generation before this threat becomes the ultimate checkmate to humanity. We should be the ones who control what we create, cultural determinism, not technological determinism. Engage in both worlds and aim for a balanced life. Social media have constantly been giving us opportunities in our endeavors, whether it be through education, academics, church, businesses, or social connections. Affecting us positively because it has exposed all of us to greater convenience, making us able to access information and connect to others better. As a gen Z individual, our group can say that our world enables us to tap into many sources transcending geographical and physical boundaries allowing us to connect to greater lengths. And when it comes to opportunities, surely I can say that it made us closer to reaching our dreams and made our task easier giving us lesser and lesser engagement to daily tasks since we could now let the technology do it for us, which also could become the problem if a time will come where every daily activity are operated by artificial intelligence or robots rather than us.

Though as much as there are several myriads of opportunities, advantages, convenience, or benefits social media could offer, we still could not ignore difference between people who had a balanced life. Meaning they lean on both worlds the online and actual world to people who chose not to go outside and live the life of connecting to others through online and social conversation depriving themselves of the significance of real-time engagement to others with real people behind their screen. And as what we have observed to kids and teenagers in this generation, one thing we can say is that teenagers are developing to become unwise in constructing, starting, and ending a conversation in a real-world setting, we are more focused on playing our online rank games than doing actual work that has been lying for hours, also many are unable to use alternatives in doing things such as cooking without gasoline, and the generation of this era are less welcoming since most all indulged to what their feed has to offer. Furthermore, it is the advancement of technology and proliferation of social media that caused teenagers to adult cases of depression and suicide skyrocket in an alarming way which is an unfortunate thing to hear especially to the times where digital and technological literacy was not imposed on us. Since we all know that there is always an opposite and equal reaction to everything and whether we like it or not, know it or not, it is the sad situation on the flip side of social media that is left irresponsibly. Social media itself is like a two way sword, it could either build or break you, and for the good things to be maximized responsibility and sensitivity should be practiced at all times in order to eliminate or at least minimize the effects to the digital natives and for the older generations who ae trying their best to catch up.

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“Digital Divide in the New Normal”

What is the digital divide? Why is it necessary to be aware of its existence and how such things happen? The digital divide is described as the gap between individuals, societal classes, businesses, and even countries with varying backgrounds and their capability to access information and use communication technology. It could also be an idea of “being left behind” in digital knowledge, skills, and accessibility. There was a time where technology such as the usage of smartphones was not a necessity because it was seen as an advantage only able people could have, it was merely a divide between the haves and the have nots. Though as generations passed the evolution of technology progressed making it widely accessed to many users transcending physical and geographical boundaries and cultural differences between people. Especially during the new normal where we are left with an option on which two viable choices to continue education are through the usage of digital technology and modules as means of learning. Not just to education but it also tapped into our economy letting us buy products and do business transactions in the comforts of our homes. As the needs of technology rise so as the gap between people evolved in a sense because now, concerns about internet bandwidth, the number of gadgets, quality of digital gadgets, digital literacy, and accessibility are deemed as the new digital divide in this new modern.  Even though its impacts may not be seen but it is felt subtly by many, putting it on a higher note as necessary for people to be aware of so that we could make individual actions to combat or solve such gaps within or outside our community.

The digital divide in the new normal is a gap between the bandwidth of the internet because almost all people these days have gadgets. According to Ash Turner, 89.84% of the world’s population owned a smartphone. Also using outdated gadgets is a cause of the digital divide as the new normal people always tend to have the latest gadgets because it is faster than older models. Digital divide in the new normal is increasing because of the rise of COVID-19, technology became commonly used in avoiding physical contact, it can be used for communication, business, school, etc. Internet bandwidth plays a major role in accessing the world wide web. When experiencing low bandwidth it affects software progress and activity. Students who are learning online might have difficulty coping in online due to slow Internet connectivity. Businesses and online sellers could not reply immediately to their customers and transactions would often be interrupted by a slow connection. Also, countries that don't have access to the internet hinder them from accessing the data bank that is most commonly used now. To avoid this problem each community has to put Wi-Fi in particular places or the government should provide cell towers for fast cellular networks so students, sellers, and business owners would have a stable connection also the countries that have highly developed technical knowledge should be imparted the information so that no people will get left behind when it comes to modern technology advancement. A further conclusion is that raising awareness of the risks and effects of technological advancement on the digital divide will properly aid us to be more considerate to people around us who are experiencing such situations and it also opens our eyes and minds to the current occurrence in our world that will aid everyone to be more responsible in this advancing world of ours which we experience digital divide.

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“Delivering News in the Present Age”

New media usage has gained much popularity especially in mass communication with the advent of modern technology advancement, it has become the most dominant form of media used not only for gaining information but also for interaction through various online platforms reaching people and ignoring geographical locations, may it be family, friends, or acquaintances. It has been popular to millions of users as a medium for delivering and producing information that allows the building of online society through this communication. Moreover, the progression and further advancement of new media gave a possibility to the convergence of traditional and new media to create a new whole to create more effective and efficient dissemination of information. Media convergence is the combination of two forces of media integrating a better format of media, just like broadcasting news through Facebook live, radio reports posted on YouTube, and entertainment papers and e-books have been introduced and posted to various websites. Furthermore, people who use the old media tend to disseminate information through various platforms of the newly presented media approach to gain more audience. New media developed the evolution of media thoroughly, it serves as a pathway that makes people's lives way easier. In addition, there are still people who are too engaged with traditional media, especially our elders. Nonetheless, new media became the widely used tool of communication in sharing, delivering, and producing information all around the globe.

In traditional media, they use newspapers, magazines, books, even television, and radio to gather information, be informed, and be updated. They also use telephones or payphones to communicate with their loved ones. In terms of business, door to door is one of their choices to make sales. Directly sending mail to their house and Banner advertisements are very hard to acquire because of its high price fee. These things must never be forgotten because they are the reasons why now we can easily access media and the internet. After all, the New Media was discovered by the ideas of all those things. Now, in new media we have the freedom to easily access media platforms where we can share, post, communicate, send emails and can gather information by using the internet and digital media in our gadgets. Social media is an example of a form of electronic communication where people can share their ideas and messages with their communities. Blogs, audio, and video streaming services are now considered not just for information and entertainment purposes, but also the source of income by the influencers and vloggers. Online selling is one of the methods to easily sell out the reseller's products. For people who love to read, they choose Online versions of newspapers, online publishing of magazines, E-books where it is easy to read digitally because it is less hassle to access. For people who love watching Film/Cinema, there are many applications where we can watch it with our gadgets. All of These are just some of the examples of traditional media being converged to New media where it is easy to access and less hassle to deliver for our society and community. This is important because we are facing a pandemic where we are limited to go outside, to talk with other people to gain information and updates. Because of the different ways of delivering news in today's digital age, it has become a great help in receiving news around the world without minding going outside. Let us be responsible enough in using this so that we avoid giving false information. We must control our usage in different ways so that we will not overuse it to the point it will cause bad to us. Practice controlling yourself because too much is not good, be responsible enough especially that you know already.

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“Understanding the Relevance of Information Literacy and News Literacy in the Midst of Social Era”

People living in the 21st century are distinctive in nature, influenced by the modernity of in-depth information gathering. Information literacy, an information literate individual has its own capability to know if an information needs evaluation and deeper contextualization. Considering the fact that people nowadays are more engaged in social trends, they are tending to deliberately find legitimate and reliable information to somewhat remain updated.  News literacy is more on people’s ability to think critically and the reason for that particular circumstance is to criticize the reliability and credibility of a news article. Being a news literate individual is indeed a tremendous advantage, especially if you are engaged in virtual society. Wherein a lot of bait have been scattered and are waiting for its victims, knowing that not all people are embedded eloquence.

The quality and accuracy of such information are determined by validating its former source and author. The sharing of information through social media or through gossip can be misleading sometimes, if we only rely on one side of the story and neglect the authenticity of an information. Nonetheless, if you attempt to search an information using your skills in critical thinking with inquisitiveness, alertness, open-mindedness, fair-mindedness and take advantage of your information evaluation ability, there is no such way for you to mislead yourself. Additionally, if you are both information and news literate you can even help people around you who are desperate for analyzing societal issues and trends. There are three categories of information disorder that young individuals should always bear in mind, the misinformation, disinformation and mal-information. That’s why if you are literate enough you can easily elude yourself from jeopardizing it for using illegitimate information against someone else.

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“Media Evolution and the Changing World”

People in the 21st century have witnessed how vast the media is, it served as the foundation of articulations that circulate in the minds and mouths of humanity. The power of media that captivated most of our attention is its ability to scatter liable information from various sources and media forms swiftly. Media indeed elevated our lives, it helped us to critically evaluate information and practice deeper contextualization by applying all literary skills that we have learn. However, there are still things that are taken into consideration in taking advantage of the media's capabilities. Having the basic human right of being informed well, we technically abide in surfing in any form of media that will give us informative news and full of integrity information that can quench our thirst of being updated always. Especially in line of political entities and governmental news, people are extremely sensitive to every information they hear or watch because sometimes it is easy for them to believe that all the declarations and promises that they’ve released out of their mouths will be manifested in the future. But now, as we observe the process of the social era, random of disinformation, misinformation, and mal-information news were scattered all over the media which contains false information. Media apps are now added as one of the common factors in our life that made our lives way better. Because of people who still believe and stayed affected which then led to infect their critical thinking and later on sabotaged their decision making in believing what's true. Information being shared as their personal experience or news article is being manipulated to drag any person based on what they’ve observed and criticisms. The problem of media to the citizens is not the media itself, but the people who uses it as a biased and abusive marketing tool in order for them to get paid as they would make their clients satisfied with their public false information sharing. As time passed, the media evolved, new inventions were developed, and the dissemination of information is way faster than before. However, the new media is prone to bias and poor quality information causing false information and irresponsible usage of media. That is why it is imperative to know how to avoid and extinguish any type of media abuse, by being alert and vigilant to what is happening in the virtual world, by being cautious and skeptical to every information you receive or read, and also never engage in any irresponsible clout sharing without first knowing the story behind the picture or post to prevent causing harm to the individual or group subjected in the viral post. In addition, practice eluding the sharing of any personal information online to avert hackers from breaching your personalized account and it could be easily prevented if people are more educated about technology. Thus as the media propagates and integrates over the years, we, the users should be upgrading along with it, similar to surfing the ocean waves to maintain cultural determinism. Furthermore, we should exercise literacy in both media and technology because it enables us to acquire critical thinking and information gathering skills, skills that hone us to become better users, sharers, and producers of media. For it is our social responsibility to build a sense of community where information that is conveyed is credible, factual, sensitive, informing, and worth sharing and keep healthy rapport in a real and virtual society. Be a shield that barricades toxicity and a sword that eliminates false information in this new media era.

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The Value Of Being A Media and Information Literate Individual

Everyone who uses social media or any form of media format can be the recipient, the sharer, and the producer at the same time, but the question underlies how you exercise that right of communication. We know how easy it is to share information in the advanced modern world, it only takes one click and it will spread like wildfire, though, communication is not merely sharing and acquiring everything you have read but also being responsible, engaging, and sensitive to everything you produce and gather. It is imperative to become a media and information literate individual in this 21st Century as technological advancement rapidly grows to expose all ages in wide and open communication. Lack of skills can be a problem in discerning factual information from not, it can also be a cause of desensitization and irresponsible usage of media, and could harm citizens. That is why it is important to be media and information literate as it is crucial in our generation. As it would aid you to become skillful in producing and gathering information which gives you an advantage in doing your endeavors especially participating in personal, professional, or social communication.

In light of social media and as time went by we all have witnessed the evolution of social media, it tremendously changed the way of life that we were used to. Being a person who is media and information literate is a big advantage, it creates you a path wherein you can safely convey your idiosyncrasy and elude misleading information. Bulk of information can be gathered through social media, the legitimacy of the information you got will affect its full integrity. Cyber citizens including you are obliged to act ethically and conventionally. There are a lot of influences that people can go with from social media platforms they have. Nonetheless if you are eloquent enough you won't be deluded, rather you can make use of the knowledge you have for the benefit of yourself and others. We can be more knowledgeable when it comes to social media awareness. It can help us evaluate our literary works and enables us to analyze and make valid information. Being a media and information literate individual means engaging in digital society because media is not just one but all variety. We should be able to create, understand properly and have the skills to think critically so that we can share information that has integrity and truthfulness. We should have the value of being a good source of information and able to translate through the use of social media. So that the information that we are sharing with others is understandable and not questionable. As of today's modernization, we are more mobilized in technology and Media where it is easy to transmit informative and rightful information. Each day tons of updated devices and technology were used to directly impose and share information and messages by just mere copy and paste methods, especially in this new normality. The importance of media and information literacy is for us to be more knowledgeable enough to understand the literates of individuality. Literacy of reading and literacy of writing are not away from each other's common definition and purposes. Every information that we write and read literates each individual to be more critical thinking in what decisions we make in imposing our messages and information. We should be aware, be sober and vigilant because we know the media has brought a big change in our life now. Some of us are too attached now on Social media platforms that sometimes we forgot to know its importance and give value.