Twenty years ago we all used to sit down in the living room and wait for our favorite show to come on. My dad loved “The Andy Griffith Show” and I was an adamant fan of “Married with Children.” We would spend the time in between his show and mine talking about life stuff, like how school was that day or if I had any girl friends. Back then television was just as much about family spending time together as it was about the show playing on the boob tube.
That all changed since the shift to consumption of online media. There are no more television programs to watch and wait for since these days whatever one wants to watch can be seen with the touch of a button or the click of a mouse. The speed and ease with which modern media streams into homes is indeed, awe-inspiring, to one like myself, that remembers when rabbit ears had to be just right in order to catch my favorite show. But with speed and ease came consequence, and the consequence of this modern movement falls upon the backs of families everywhere.
Instead of brother and sister fighting over who gets to watch what and when they all run to their rooms, log on, and pine away. It’s convenient and marvelous but at the same time it’s saddening: rather than the interaction that comes from sharing (or fighting like cats and dogs) the television there is merely a hollow place where it once was. The faster we stream the further away from one another do we drift.
How, positively or negatively, has consuming media online affected me? I can watch more of what I want, when I want, to the precise extent I want but in doing so I have chosen to be alone. Dad doesn't come along to ask about my day nor will sister fight me for the remote. I have complete control over the media yet no connection to content; the content of my life. So has streaming media online affected me negatively? In a word, yes.
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