Media Literacy

I like to think of myself as a very media literate person. Mostly because I think of myself as a very technologically literate person. Although I don't really do much critical examination of the media, I try, whenever possible, to stay informed. The sources of my information I suppose may be a bit flawed.

I've only recently started reading the paper. Up until now, at the age of 18, I have gone my whole life without ever reading more than the front page of the paper. That is not to say that I'm ignorant. From the internet to working at Rogers TV I was quite well informed. This really has to say something about this digital age we live in, because I know that I am not the minority in my means of media consumption.

I'm pretty sure that most of my generation doesn't often sit around leisurely reading the paper on park benches. Recently I've even gotten some odd stares while standing around reading the paper waiting for class to begin.

I think it's because This generation doesn't really see an advantage to news content. The ideology is that, if I'm not going to gain some earth shattering piece of information that I'd otherwise totally miss then why should I take the time to read it?

I think this is a really interesting ideal. If this generation adopts this ideology then we'll be the kind of people who are informed only by the fastest, easiest, medium of distribution. Additionally I'd suppose we'd begin sorting everything by informational relevance, and adopting accessibility over reliability.

Is our generation of technologically immersed people spiralling frantically towards media illiteracy? Is our supreme amount of consumption and total lack of analysis laying the groundwork for people who are more often informed by facebook and wikipedia then from actual news outlets?

Perhaps I'm less media literate then I thought, but if so, I’m not the only one.