Chapter 3: Too Much Media!!!

There is a disease among us, so insidious, that no one can withstand. It has infiltrated our homes. It has absorbed the lives of our children. It is manifest everywhere, growing more prevalent every minute, and it is currently allowing me to write this and publish it to a world-wide audience. Cool, eh?

The mass media obviously cannot be reduced to a good or bad thing. While many vices and evils have been promoted, much good has come about as well from the rise of the mass media society.
Media is a just a vehicle: it allows us to go more places and see more things at greater speeds than we could before. But it can also lead to trouble if we spend too long in the car.

Evidence of over-dependence on mass media is all around us. I recently played a CD of Disney tunes in my car. My freshman friends instantly started singing along as if they had the songs programmed into their minds. In a sense they did! My generation grew up watching Disney, Nickalodeon, and PBS. The trend still continues: whenever I babysit my siblings and don't know what to do with them, I put on a movie or TV show. I'm insinuating that child exposure to media is inherently bad; such things obviously teach children about the world around them. However, over-exposure can have negative effects. In Aaron Espe's recently released album, Songs from a Small Town, he sings the lyrics, "I grew up without a television/All we ever did was play with the neighbor kids." Real life social interaction must be more healthy for young children then fake, scripted, virtual realities taught by movies and media.

One major threat presented by the media is idleness. For centuries, idleness was looked upon as a terrible vice. Inactivity keeps people from achievement and excercise. The growing obesity rate of Americans may very well be due to the population's inactivity based on overuse of computers, televisions, and magazines. Most of us need look no further than our own lives for recent evidence of this fact. I personally spent at least two hours today in front of a computer. Imagine the excercise I could have gotten or the good I could have accomplished with that time.

Another threat of overuse with the media is overdependence. Media influence dominates our lives. If the government were to somehow gain control over all forms of media coverage, we would be living in an Orwellian nightmare. As things stand, people depend on media for news, perspective on which issues are important, fashion, and social standards. This was clearly illustrated by L. Tom Perry's talk in 2003, "The Importance of the Family." He told the following story:

"Several years ago, I was having dinner with my daughter and her family. The scene is all too common in most homes with small children. My daughter was trying to encourage her young, three-year-old son to eat a balanced meal. He had eaten all the food on his plate that he liked. A small serving of green beans remained, which he was not fond of. In desperation, the mother picked up a fork and tried to encourage him to eat his beans. He tolerated it just about as long as he could. Then he exclaimed, “Look, Mom, don’t foul up a good friendship!”
Those were the exact words he heard on a television commercial a few days earlier. Oh, what impact advertising, television programs, the Internet, and the other media are having on our family units!
We remind you that parents are to preside over their own families."

Clearly, while media is a useful tool, we must be careful not to get so drawn into it that it begins to define our lives. One day, our media may be gone. All it would take is a well-planned bombing of a few satellites. If our lives based and centered on various forms of media, we may realize we don't have much should that day come. It is important for people not to become involved in media to the point that it defines their being.