McMillan & Morrison Coming of age with the Internet

Kaima Dunbar

I found this reading very interesting and it made me think about my relationship with the internet. “While some informants found the internet allowed for the creation of a new persona that could be accepted “as is”, others found that the new self they had developed through their online activities was alienated.”(Coming of age with the internet pg. 78) I remember my earlier years of becoming a teenager I was very addicted to the internet to be exact teen chat rooms. Just like Brian brother Mark in one of the interviews, I and my friends would spend hours online to the point I was on the computer all night. Just like Mark we all had different online identities. I don’t think this is very healthy for developing minds. But on the other hand, “the experience of personal development through online media use was primarily positive. Some saw it as a natural and necessary part of human evolution: I think people were born to enjoy interactivity and love communicating interactively.” (Coming of age with the internet pg. 80) I also agree and can relate to that statement as well. I feel like the internet is one of the best parts of new technology and for people who don’t know how to use the internet it can be a big disadvantage when applying for jobs or even job hunting these days.


Questions/Comments

In this day and age we have to learn how to use the internet; it’s a big part of society. But with so many of are adolescent becoming addicted, where do we draw the line?

Links

http://www.netaddiction.com/

The Tangle of Discourses by Rebecca Raby

Things I Understood

This passage was hard to understand for me it was because of the wording. But from what I did understand. Raby has five discourses that she feels molds ideas of teens in society: the storm, becoming, at-risk, social problem, and pleasurable consumption. “The determination to establish separate identities and to demonstrate their independence, one way or another, from their parents’ world, often brands teenagers as potential troublemakers in the public and we think the worst.”(Raby pg 436) I believe Raby is trying to say, that often we tell are teens who to be and how to act with discourses. “A discourse refers to a set of meanings, metaphors, representations, images, stories, statements and so on that in some way together produce a particular version of events” (Raby pg 430) From what I understood of these discourses are imbedded into adolescent experience from the outside by “professional positions who hold a particular authority and thus create knowledge about certain subjects” (Raby pg 430).

Things I didn’t Understand

I believe that I understood the passage, after reading it carefully. I just felt like the way the passage was worded was hard to understand.

Imbedded link http://www.canada.com/life/parenting/Teen+girls+fashion+tightrope/1506573/story.html

Media Literacy

Kaima Dunbar

“Media literacy is the process of analyzing, evaluating and creating messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres and forms.” I’m not sure how advertisers put together these advertisements, but it seems like their intention is to not only sell the product but to control the minds of the viewers. Advertisements are everywhere; we are overwhelmed with all these messages the media is sending through ads everyday. Buy this, sell that, works faster, saves money, be beautiful, be thin, look cool, and media has different ways of sending these messages. “The physical separation of the races in the ultra segregated United States combines with seeming intimacy of MTV and videos to give a large field for adolescent fantasies of sex and violence” ( Roediger 89). This is just another form of marketing to teens, we get message from not only ads but music, videos, and are peers. There were so many ads out there with crazy intentions and misleading messages. Advertisements target every race, gender and class; advertising has no prejudice. It’s something we all need to be educated about, so we don’t fall into the hype. Jean Kilbourne identifies the problems in advertisement, hoping we take action as a nation.

comments
With all the great Media Literacy available to us,why is it a big percentage of teens are not awear of the medias messages?

Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us By Linda Christensen

While reading the passage I believe Christensen main point was to show the reader that the media matters. “Our society’s culture industry colonizes their minds and teaches them how to act, live, and dream. This indoctrination hits young children especially hard. The “secret education,” as Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman dubs it, delivered by children’s and movies instructs young people to accept the world as it is portrayed in these social blueprints” (Christensen pg 126) I feel like in today’s society the influence on the media is so strong that it decreases girls self esteem and can lead to eating disorders and unwanted pregnancies. Our society’s influence on our adolescents about being beautiful and having the best figure puts a lot of strain on girls. Questions like, does beauty really define my power as a woman? Does advertisement really objectify my body? Should sexuality be my main concern? “My waist didn’t dip into an hour-glass; in fact, according to the novels I read my thick ankles doomed me to be cast as the peasant woman reaping hay while the heroine swept by her handsome man in hot pursuit” (Christensen pg 126)
Beauty is culturally produced and changes across different cultures and historical points. Christensen feels like we are loosing sight of true beauty. If God wanted us all to look like the edited pictures in magazines, then he wouldn’t have made us all different. I think that it is kind of hard for girls to feel pretty now a days because of how people have changed what the real meaning of beauty is it seams like now beauty means that u need to be thin in the white America culture. While indicating, males are who we should be beautiful for “the strong fearless male”. “I am uncomfortable with those messages. I don’t want students to believe that change can be bought at the mall, nor do I want them thinking that the pinnacle of a woman’s life is an “I DO” that supposedly leads them to a “happily ever after.” I don’t want my female students to see their “sisters” as competition for the scarce and wonderful commodity – men.”

Things I didn’t understand
· The charting stereotypes, I don’t understand how charting stereotypes will help you. I feel like stereotypes have became a norm in are society and people often label with out even knowing it.

Web source
· http://kidshealth.org/teen/

Connections
· I felt like there was a connection with the assumptions posters we did in class the first day. I was in the “media matters” group and this passage clearly backs up a lot of what my group had on the poster. Indicating the fact that the media matters and is affecting are everyday life.

Questions/Comments
· I want to no how a stereotype has affected your life? And do you feel like stereotypes are present in children cartoons?

When i was 13.......

I sat in the back of the class with my head down on the desk, and my hands slowly sweating up. I attend an all white school; for three years of my life I felt like I didn’t belong. At lunch we (black students) made sure to always sit together we only identified our selves with blacks. I guess it was because we all shared the same culture? We felt like we was out number and that led us to isolating are selves. If that wasn’t enough to deal with I was also a “tomboy”, but somewhere between 8th grade and my freshmen year of high school the media played a big part of my life, I was now worried about what I looked like, and was now very aware of what I should look like, what is beautiful, and what I had to change about me. The summer before I started high school I did a total 360, the idea that magazines and the media was responsible for why I changed myself have played a big part of my life. Over the years, I have read and learned a lot about the media. I always felt like I needed to make a difference, to give young girls what I didn’t have growing up. My senor year of high school I started a movement the phenomenal women movement also known as P.M.W. I went through a 10 week peer education training to be able to run these groups. I put a lot of time and effort into making this project well planned and worth while. I feel by educating teens about nutrition, healthy weight and the importance of exercise, we can start to provide alternative models of what it means to be healthy and attractive.