Media Memoir

Over the years media has evolved in many ways. My personal experience with media has also changed drastically as media has evolved over the years. As a young child, my media experience consisted primarily of television. I used to watch cartoons on Saturday mornings just as every other child did. As a child, I knew everything I saw on television was not real; however many of the shows I watched had an influence on me.

As I progressed into my teenage years, I began to use the internet more and more. The internet has grown extremely fast over the years, and is now one of the most prominent types of media for my age group. Growing up, my dad taught me a lot about computers and how the internet works. This was very beneficial because as I got older I was able to learn more about online media myself. My family tends to use internet very often for work, news, and leisure.

Radio was also a prominent form of media for me growing up. I used to listen to the radio before CD’s and mp3 files become the new age. I also remember riding in the car with my dad when I was younger and he would listen to National Public Radio. At the time, I also nagged him to change the station because I considered talk radio to be boring. Listening to talk radio more recently, I realized that it is very informative for news and many of the topics are actually very interesting. Recently, this past Fall I was interviewed about online social networking on Vermont Public Radio. This changed my opinion of talk radio, because I realized they include topics I am interested in. The interview allowed me to explain the prominence of social networking sites such as facebook.com or myspace.com to an older demographic that may have little to no knowledge of these sites.

Newspapers were not as prominent in my childhood, besides the typical comic strips. I always saw my parents reading newspapers but never really understood why they enjoyed that so much. As I got older, in my later years of high school, teachers began to encourage students to read the newspaper and assigned summarizing articles. This made me begin to get involved in reading the news.

Personally, I do not enjoy reading something that I am not necessarily interested in; whether it may be book, magazine, or newspaper, if it is not on a topic of my liking, than I will dread reading it. Instead of reading a book or newspaper, I would much rather watch television, browse the web, or listen to radio or music. The web is the most prominent form of media for me today, and will more than likely become traditionally accepted form of media in our society.