What's easiest?

I read an article recently that gave many percentages of how much media an average American consumes. As well, it explained the effects of the media on different people of different ages, and how media has evolved. Included in the article were some theories as to why we consumer certain types of media. After reading the article and thinking about the theories, I came up with one of my own. I decided to categorize media into two different categories. The first being “easy media”, which includes things such as TV, radio, CDs, tapes, commercials, and movies. The second being “hard media”, which includes things like books, magazines, newspapers, and the internet.

I split these different medias up for many reasons. One of the main reasons for this decision was prompted by the Media Use survey that was handed out the first day of class. I realized that I listen to an extreme amount of music each week, watch a sufficient amount of TV and movies, read a decent number of magazines, but occasionally read the newspaper, and rarely attempt to read a book. As well, I am on the internet for a good amount of time each week, but most of my internet use is for social reasons, and not as much for research or to be updated about the latest worldly news. I figured my media use is among the average, which is why I categorized the media forms and made my assumption.

As our society continues to grow and technologies become more advanced, people become lazier. Therefore, we are more apt to watch a TV show than read a book because it requires less effort. Our society has become used to this easy lifestyle and having things done for us, which is why we would rather watch the news than read a newspaper. This is the reason behind the “easy media” and “hard media”. With “easy media” the work is done for us. It almost requires no effort for us to think because we just have to tune in. Whereas “hard media” requires our time and effort. We have to read the articles or do the research ourselves, which is unappealing to many. As our society continues to become more advanced, it is predicted that we will become even lazier. This laziness will keep our society more interested in the easier forms of media and less interested in the more educational media forms that are offered.

Reality TV

After watching my weekly guilty pleasure of reality T.V., I realized how addicted our society has become to this phenomenon. Every week millions of people, including myself, tune into the latest reality T.V. shows, my favorites being MTV’s Laguna Beach and The Real World. It has almost become a ritual for me, as well as the millions of others that watch these addicting shows. We start off merely watching the show for entertainment, but end up knowing the backgrounds of all the characters, the latest gossip, the new hookups, the recent breakups, and we cannot get enough of the overly dramatic fights. Before we know it, these so called “reality” T.V. shows become part of our lives. These shows have almost begun to dictate our nightly routines because we are obsessed with what is going to happen next and feel completely lost if we miss this week’s episodes. So why is it that reality T.V. has become such an important part of our daily lives? It’s hard to explain why we envelop ourselves so deeply into these shows. But whether it is because we simply want to keep up with the latest gossip so that we have something to talk about the next day, or because we are able to live through these dramatic characters, the shows keep us tuning in every week. Even though this “reality” T.V. is not as real as we like to believe it is, it has taken over our society and does not look like its slowing down any time soon.