Change Lab Personal Reflection

This Change Lab project was difficult to get started with. First, we were assigned fellow group co-workers to work on this project with. Our assignment was to choose a particular social issue that every group member felt passionate towards to focus on and indulge ourselves completely in this issue. My group members and immediately leaned towards the issue of child literacy mixed with young girls views of their image. We then pondered upon a way in which we could combine these issues to focus on a single topic. After much talk about society today and the lives of today's youth generation, we discovered both these issues could be tied to the media.

The media is so closely associated with the lives of even the middle-school children in today's society. Kids are reading on the internet about celebrities and spending days with eyes glued to a screen. Often times the internet sets unrealistic and false expectations for young girls particularly for body image. This has a high tendency to put down the confidence of beautiful young girls who get these unrealistic expectations in their minds causing inappropriate behavior. To narrow down our social issue even further, as a group, we decided to choose the topic of media literacy to protect the youth of today in regards to their use of technology in this day and age. Our group specifically believed that all young children deserved equal opportunity to be media literate. To make our groups statement realistic we even developed a curriculum. The goal for success would be to implement this curriculum in middle schools across the country.

I didn't fully understand what was meant by media literacy prior to working on this project. I learned that being media literate meant understanding the function and purpose of media as an institution. We did a lot of our research on www.medialit.org which gave us a better understanding of our social issue.

The 'curriculum' we developed from the definition of media literacy, provided by www.medialit.org, was comprised of four main portions. The portions would be to teach youth how to access technology, analyze it, evaluate it, and create it. In learning how to analyze the media this will focus on real world application, safety, and the way in which teens view themselves or others in regard to what the internet tells them. Our plan for acting upon this social issue would be to work alongside educators, field professionals, students, and media experts to implement a more specific curriculum relating it specifically to the youth of today particularly for the youth in middle school grades.

Everything has changed juristically since our parents were young, to when we were young, in comparison with our youth today. This is why it is so important for the youth to learn how to learn media and learn about media portrayal of topics and how the portrayal isn't always the whole truth. During this project I really felt like I was digging deeper into a view on the youth of today. I discover that our society has changed so much even since I was a child. And I am not 100% entirely sure that all this change has been for the better. I have noticed that a lot of time on TV or youtube there are little commercial promoting kids to get outside and explore nature and I couldn't agree more with these commercials. I believe that young middle schooler do need to branch out and do more than allow themselves so much screen time in one day. It is important for these kids to get outside and get exercise in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

I think through the work done by this project promoting media literacy I have sparked interest in healthy lifestyles for our youth. I originally have always wanted to study medicine in order to help people. This project has renewed my interest, and I love it! I enjoy promoting healthy lifestyles. I feel great when I'm being healthy and I want to encourage others to be healthy as well. This would include limited screen time, exercise, sleep, and a healthy diet. As an eventual career path I would enjoy working with people. This project also allowed be to realize that I prefer working with the youth. The elderly are awesome to work with because of all the history that they have and all the stories they have to share. Although I prefer to work with the youth as the are young and full of great potential and creativity. I would love to have a lasting impact on someones life that they will carry with themselves through time. The youth are our future, teaching our society the basics of media and healthy living will lead to positive lasting results for many generations to come.