Illumination

A certain memory or memories that I have are relatively simple but as I relate them to my career it actually seems more complex yet makes complete sense. Back when most of my immediate family all lived under the same roof we enjoyed going out to dinner quite often, this was our time to kind of debrief for the week and just catch up with each other since we were all pretty busy. For the most part they were enjoyable times but a common trend starting occurring that put a real damper on us really enjoying going out.

To put it simply, my mom is addicted to her phone, she is always on it whether she’s talking to someone or scrolling through some news article or even Facebook. At first we joked that she was just being a typical older person who had just discovered just how much you can do with technology these days. It eventually annoyed go to the point to where she was physically present at dinner but mentally she was somewhere else and we all just got flat out annoyed to the point where we would just say why do we even go out when all you do is get on your phone? Like what is the point?

This got me wondering how and why do become so consumed by media and vice versa. Why is the need to stay plugged in so great that we displace our time with family and friends with other things? It’s memories ad situations like these that got me so interested in media studies and more specifically the UGT.