New Media and Our Everyday Lives

New media technology has been created, adopted, and absorbed into the culture at increasingly dramatic rates. With the addition of all this new media many people throughout the world have been affected in both their cultures and society they associate with. With the many different technologies that exist and that are being invented it seems that technology is shaping our society. Jenkins explained characteristics in new media landscape that are almost controlling and dictating our relationships with others.

One of new media's characteristics that Jenkins lists is "everyday." New media technologies have become such a huge part of our lives that it has integrated into our everyday social interactions. Jenkins is definitely right. Every single day I use my laptop, my cell phone, my i pod, television, and many other technologies that it seems I can't live without. Technology has shaped my social interactions. I have to check my email daily or I could miss something important for deadlines in school. Most of my friends communicate to me via my cell phone or through Facebook. If my computer or cell phone were to stop working I think my life would be hectic. I would have no form of of communication with others except for personal contact. I do not think I would even be able to wake up on time since I use my cell phone as an alarm clock. Jenkins is right, new media does become dangerous as it becomes part of our daily lives. We do not realize that there is a layer of media surrounding us, and we become dependent upon it too much.

A recent news article stated that Utah residents are the biggest consumers of porn on the internet in our nation. For every 1000 broadband users, 5.47 people have subscriptions to porn sites in this state. For some people this news is very shocking, and the article also found that the most conservative and religious states have higher rates of porn site usage. This is interesting because for most of these people they are stepping out of what their culture and religions go against. Typically most people would think that the more conservative and religious states have the least amount of porn site usage. However, as the internet has become a daily part of most of our lives in this nation it is also easy for people to hide their identities and remain anonymous online. People we socialize with everyday do not know what we may be doing on the web, and people can house many secrets this way.

The use of these porn sites has become a daily routine for many, even within religious communities...

"Church-goers bought less online porn on Sundays – a 1% increase in a postal code's religious attendance was associated with a 0.1% drop in subscriptions that day. However, expenditures on other days of the week brought them in line with the rest of the country, Edelman finds."

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Business/Story?id=6977202&page=1

Did the internet turn these people away from their beliefs? Has daily interactions on the internet changed our values we might have had before we used this technology? Will these secrets that we keep online destroy our relationships with others in the real world? Does the daily use of media in our lives change only the way we live or does it also affect our personalities and habits?