Hi Blog! This post we are going to talk about Media Ecology and how to use your time while traveling focusing on reality rather than staying glued to a technology and social media. It is too often that people get trapped to our phones and computers, this can lead us to forgetting to experience the beauty of all the new places we visit. Of course we all want to share the beauty of the city we are in and all the cute selfies with the beautiful view behind us, but after each post, it is common to open our phones every few minutes to check on who is liking, commenting and how many interactions we get. I understand that as people in the twenty first century we are in the habit of checking our phones to check on social media, or texting our friends to see what they are up to. But if we study media ecology we can understand why we are constantly glued to our phones and why social media apps use things to draw us in and keep us there longer.
The Media Ecology theory is the study of different personal and social environments created by the use of different communication technologies (pg. 310). It was created by Marshall McLuhan and it was created to study the ways that media influences society and effects human environments. The theory has three main principles, the first being “the medium is the message”. This means that the medium through which we communicate holds more value than the message itself. People do not realize that the medium has almost more of an affect than the message and McLuhan wanted us to see that media, regardless of the content, reshapes human experience far more than the total of the messages they contain (pg. 310). The second principle is how we shape out technological tools and they shape us. This principle discusses how over time new inventions and developments change our lives and shape how people communicate with each other. Before it was the telegraph and the printing press but we are now entering an electronic era where we use new technologies such as our phone to engage with others. “A medium shapes us because we partake of it over and over until it becomes an extension of our selves” (pg. 311). Today, we are so used to being on our phones and using social media like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. that we are constantly drawn to look at them daily or in some cases hourly. The third principle is that Media Ecology should be focused on morality. New technology always leads us to a potential deal with the devil aka a Faustian Bargain. Social media offers many benefits but it also can cause a lot of harm, we just have to recognize that there is a line that can be crossed and how to deal with life if we cross it.
With all of this knowledge on how Media affects our daily lives we can understand that most people living in the 21st century are in the habit of scrolling through social media constantly. With this theory in mind, we can learn to take a break from the mediums we use and appreciate the new cities we are visiting. Some advice would to be, put down your phone. Instead of picking up your phone to send a quick update, keep a journal with you and write down everything about your day at the end of the night, then post when you are home. Especially today, we all need to learn how to live in the moment. With so much new technology it is hard to do that but practice makes perfect! I can promise that if you travel with the intention to experience a city rather than share the experience it will be more worth it when you look back.
Citations:
Griffin, Emory A., et al. A First Look at Communication Theory. McGraw-Hill Education, 2019.