Communication Gone Digital
Today I thought about how much time I spend using mass media throughout my day. In the morning I wake up and check my Instagram, at break I look at my Facebook, after work I watch the news or Netflix, at the gym and in my car I listen to music, and at night I watch primetime programming and all the advertisements that come along with it. New media has drastically increased my media intake.
With all of these technologies added together, I spend 5 hours a day taking in mass media messages. Whether I am connecting with friends or inadvertently listening to a radio ad, I hear a lot of messages each day. And with apps like Vine, I am taking in a new message every 6 seconds! All of those messages ad up and can be very distracting to your focus and daily real life routines. It is so easy to become caught up in this convenient new availability of constant entertainment. Sometimes I forget how much better it is to be in the moment with no mass communication messages bombarding me experiences the real world.
I feel virtual reality has become a problem for my generation as we use it as a supplement for real human interaction. On my cell phone I use tools for machine assisted interpersonal communication and mass communication all day long. I constantly have my phone within arms reach incase I need or want to use it to send and receive communication messages. And sometimes that can replace face-to-face interaction.
According to media specialist West Jones of Incredible Marketing, U.S. consumption of digital media grew by more than 83% from 2010 to 2013.” And I can safely predict that it will continue to grow as we find more uses for it.
When I was younger, no one had nearly as much access to media, aside from television, because the technology simply didn’t exist yet. Now we can watch our shows as when we like and on whatever device we prefer.
Also, social media has now become a huge part of our lives, when it didn’t even exist when I was younger. Now I feel many people have become dependent on it. People devote time each day to check into all of their favorite social media sites and apps. To my surprise, behind Facebook, Tumblr came in as the second most used social media platform. Way to go Tumblr!
To see some numbers on just how much Americans use social media, check out http://www.businessinsider.com/social-media-engagement-statistics-2-2014-1
I think as more technologies continue to develop and our culture becomes more reliant on machine-mediated communication, we will need to learn how to balance our interactions. Right now, as a culture, we are just getting a hang of this whole new media thing. Once it has been around long enough that we can’t even imagine life without it, then we will understand where it fits in with face-to-face communication. Each has its advantage.
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