Reflection

Elizabeth Woltemath

My social media binge and fast experiences were most likely a little unique from many student’s experience. I was not able to engage fully in the media binge, the reason being I discontinued my subscription to any social media accounts throughout this past year. I have found them to be a supremely and mind-numbingly waste of time and energy. Due to this, I am on a ‘media fast’ nearly everyday. So instead of participating in the media fast and binge, I reflected over the many ways that social media affects my life andthe lives of those around me .

I have realized that our culture is almost completely dependant upon high-tech applied science. Social media is perhaps the most prominent and affecting technological creations, and it plays a dominant role in the culture of today. These sites are especially favored by other students around my age; as they serve as a channel for users to quickly connect and keep up with others in our fast-paced society. Unfortunately, this generation has become so completely imbedded in this dominant media of today, they have lost the ability to deeply connect and fully communicate with the people around them. This something I noticed in my own life, and one of the main reasons that I stopped using social media.

I realized that the time I spent on social media was having a direct negative impact on the important relationships in my life. It had significantly decreased the value of my face to face interactions and I found myself constantly thinking about what was going on in the ‘other world’ of social media I hoped that by ending my relationship with social media, I could begin and new and more thorough relationship with myself. I realized, once I was without my it, that I had allowed my ‘connections’ on social media to become equally as important the relationships in my real life, including the relationship I had with myself, and I think this is a pretty common occurrence to in today’s media obsessed world. However, as time has gone on, I have come to the conclusion that social media is not an inherently negative thing, it simply depends upon how users decide to let it influence their lives.