A Middle Moment: Determine how media affects your well-being

How we interact with media matters. This includes, but is not limited to, how we respond to checking our e-mail, MySpace, Google Reader or AIM; what we do when bombarded with phone calls; or even the (seemingly) more simple act of sitting down to watch TV.

We can choose to make this experience enriching or revolting, though most of the time we feel that the choice is hardly ours.

Every medium we choose to interact with affects us emotionally. The most obvious way we choose to interact with technology is in our words and actions. This is what we say in our e-mails and how we answer the phone. How we respond is our choice.

These interactions can affect our thoughts and well-being for the rest of our day, week, year or lifetime. We carry how we feel with us, like we carry a BlackBerry or an iPhone in our pocket.

Maybe no one hears about how I personally feel, but at the same time, I can’t separate how I feel from the way I respond to my e-mail. We should choose for this experience to be beneficial, not stressful.

How I feel comes from the ways I choose to interact with media, and it’s up to me to respond to the media itself in ways I’d like everyone to, though it’s not always the first thing on my mind when my inbox is full.

It is my hope that one day media in the broadest sense of the term will help us become content. We’re actually at a point where we can do this right now. As media now is so fluid and changing, we are evolving the future of it as fast as you can say “New York Times reader,” or “My Yahoo!” If nobody goes to a store, it will fail as a business.

If no one visits a Web site, it will fade into oblivion, as they will no longer get advertising revenue and visitors to sustain their purpose.

In the same way that buying organic food is a consumer “vote” toward a more organically grown society, when we choose to participate in MySpace and YouTube, we are adding “votes” for these types of media to keep existing.

We should perpetuate the world we want to see, not want to avoid.

Do not go on AIM if you do not want to chat or check your e-mail every hour when unnecessary, but at the same time, if you enjoy YouTube, put as many videos as you can upload, or if you enjoy written dialogues, sign on to AIM and chat away and get a phone with internet ““ pronto.

These decisions we are making will affect humanity for years to come. We are controlling the direction we want media, and through this, the direction we want humanity to take: not only in terms of our experience but the experience of future generations to come.

The blogs we view, the Facebook “apps” we add, the comments we post, the videos we upload are the future we create.

The ways each and every one of us chooses to interact through media that enrich (or engulf) our daily lives are currently the votes we are placing for the future direction of media.

And it’s your choice. Vote.

E-mail Rood at drood@media.ucla.edu

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