Ella Turkie's Blog

Facebook's users are going down - and quickly. In 2017, Facebook's user base declined by 15 million people since 2017. The biggest drop was within the teen and millennial users. People from ages 14 - 34 are not particularly active on the sight, and seem to be switching over to Instagram. Recent exposes regarding the misinformation, ads, and fake news that all exist on Facebook, designed to influence users for political or business purposes have turned a lot of people off the site. Facebook has breached a lot of the population's trust, causing them to become inactive or delete their accounts entirely. People are not leaving social media altogether. About 80% of people the U.S are on some form of social media. Instagram is another photo-sharing platform, which collects significantly less personal information than Facebook, is a more appealing option to many. It is also more 'hip' with the younger generations, with more than 1 billion monthly users. Despite this, Face...

How does our reality become distorted by media? The constant presence of violence can quickly desensitize an individual or community. Turn on the TV, and violence is there. Play a video game where the goal is to kill as many people as possible. In music, on social media, and in movies, gore and violence are often presented to the viewer. My parents, who did not grow up with the internet, are deeply disturbed by gory horror movies and TV shows, that my brother and I have been comfortable watching since elementary school. Although this may simply be a matter of preference, the increased consumption of media between generations can't be ignored. I can't help but wonder if my enjoyment of horror movies has been influenced by the violence I have been seeing on the internet for years. I've also noticed that my parent's reaction to news stories varies greatly from mine. Hearing about 'Four Dead' is sad to me, as it would be anyone, but my parents definitely react in...

I can't remember a time in my life when I was not drowning in a media storm, but I also cannot remember when it started, or when I first felt it's presence. I think the biggest influence in my life as of now is Instagram. Since I have been in this class, I've started tracking how much time I spend on the app everyday. I spent an avergae of 3 hours and 21 minutes of the app during the week of 4/8. I was greatly disgusted by that number, so I did my best to cut it down for the next week, but definitely struggled. The next week, my average screen time on Instagram was 2 hours and 16 minutes, which was a large improvement but still a gross amount of my day spent on the app. To try and help this, I installed another app that shut off instagram after a set number of minutes, but I always found myself unblocking instagram in the settings. I eventually deleted the app completely. Although often unspoke, I feel me and many other teens have an addiction to social media. It is...

Advertising - it's everywhere. No matter where I go, someone is trying to sell me something, a dream, a concept. Recently I was surfing the web and came across a lot of advertisements. One of the most shocking ads I saw was one of a girl in a bikini saying, "Are You Beach Body Ready?" The ad was for Protein World. The bright yellow of the add drew me to it, as did the bolded capital letters of the slogan. Immediately I knew this ad was targeted at women, attempting to convince them they need to lose weight, and therefore need this product.The toxic impication of this statement caught my eye, however I can't deny it's success in grabbing my attention. Then I, as the advertiser wanted me to do, wondered: Am I beach body ready? Negative messages, or toxic ones may not be good from an ethical standpoint, but do seem to be successful in the wolrd of advertising. I noticed the ad was for protein powder and immediately wondered if I had enough protien in my diet. Did...

Lanuage - the way we express ourselves, the way we communicate ideas. With some thought, we are all capable of using certain lanuage in order to persuade those we're communicating with to think a certain way. For example, the word youthful implies innocence, health, and growth, while the word immature has connotations of irresponsibility, incapability or disapointment. Two words that essentially mean the same thing can pain a very different picture in the mind of the consumer. Recently I examined two articles about the recent seperation of families at the border, one by Fox News and the other by BBC. Right off the bat, the titles of the articles make the author's view of the issue quite clear. The headline by Fox News is, " 'They're So Obsessed With Hating Trump':Ingraham Calls Out Media's 'Hypocrisy' on Family Separations." Words such as 'obsessed,' 'hating,' 'hypocriscy,' and the phrase 'call out,' all attmep...

Media - the man behind the curtain, the autocrat of my mind. While I would prefer to deny it, it's impossible to brush over the role media plays in my life. Before this year, I lacked the understanding of media’s ever present control over my life. I considered 'media' to be the apps on my phone; instagram, snapchat, twitter, etc. It is all of these things, but also so much more. It is the television shows I watch, the movies I see, the books and newspapers I read, the ads that surround me. Media is the source of all communication I have with the outside world, it's where I get the majority of my information. My understanding of current events, politics, and social movements are predominantly derived from social media, as is the same for most teens. When I was in the seventh graded, I was given my first phone, a lot later than most of my peers the time. Being denied this privilege for so long, (or at least it seemed so in my brain) led to my immediate abuse of it....