I thought it was really interesting talking about fear in the media this week in class.  I have always been the type of person that refuses to watch a scary movie.  I have never enjoyed being scared and I don't think it is fun at all. I thought it was interesting talking about seeing something scary in the media when we were younger and how those fears and memories stick with us.  It reminded me of when I was seven years old and The second Harry Potter movie came out.  I thought it was SO scary and I hated the giant spiders in it and the snake that you could hear in the walls of Hogwarts.  I remember going to see it with my parents and brother and I was so scared that my mom had to leave the theater with me and we ended up leaving the movie early because it made me so scared. It is something that has stuck with me ever since! I still have a hard time watching this movie and it is by far my least favorite of all the Harry Potter movies.

Last week I decided to try to not get on Facebook so much during the day and to not just look at it when I am bored. I found that I wasted so much time on it and I wanted to try and do other things that were a better use of my time.  It was definitely a lot harder this past week than I thought it would be! I found myself still going to look at it on my phone out of habit and having to remind myself not too.  I didn't think it would be so hard for me so I was surprised when I found myself constantly wanting to look at it.  I might just have to delete the app off my phone this week so I am not as tempted. I hope I can do a better job this week of avoiding it!

During the first week of school, I tried to go one whole day without using media. To be honest, it was really hard for me and I did not do a very good job of avoiding media.  However, the more I have thought about it, the more I want to try and reduce the amount of media in my life overall. I don't want to be as extreme as the first week of school and completely cut it out, but I want to try and cut out one thing at a time that I feel is not a good use of my time or takes too much of my attention.  I have decided that for this week I am going to try to cut out Facebook. I realized that most of the things that were posted on Facebook I didn't even care about and I found myself mindlessly scrolling through when bored or trying to pass time. Instead of just going to look at Facebook when I am bored, I am going to try to get other things done that are more important. I hope I can stick to it!

Recently in class we talked about advertising and its effects on us and society.  I thought it was really interesting because I have never thought a lot about advertising and its effects.  Because today was the super bowl, I made sure to pay close attention to the commercials and the different tactics that we learned about in class that advertisements use to try and get you to pay attention to their product. It was eye opening to while watching some of the commercials and the messages they portrayed. There were some that I thought were inappropriate and too sexual but there were also some that I thought were hilarious! My favorite commercials were the Doritos commercial and the Toyota Hybrid commercial.  They were both really funny and were not inappropriate which I really liked.  It showed me that even though we have to be careful when it comes to advertising, it can also be for our enjoyment and to simply make us laugh.