Media consumption grows increasingly with the development of the internet and the popularization of social media. Today, a regular adult spends almost half of the day consuming media, which includes watching TV, surfing the web, and texting through various mediums either at home or outside. Such a vast number of sources and information flooding from every direction raises the necessity of effective media navigation. Media literacy is precisely the skill of accessing, analyzing, creating, evaluating, and acting accordingly with all communication forms. Being able to decode the media’s embedded message and the aim it wants to achieve allows the person to stay disillusioned and be an effective communicator.
Media nowadays surrounds people in all spheres of life, including personal, social, and professional fields. It allows them to build and empower relationships through social media by texting or tagging a friend on a photo. Media also allows a person to create and modify one’s social image online through the posts they write in the feed. Even professional relationships can be build as many companies employ people online and choose candidates based on their social media profiles. However, all these possibilities do not come without certain risks when a media becomes a burden. Personal relationships can be damaged if the person decoded the text incorrectly. One’s reputation can be destroyed in a matter of seconds by a thoughtless comment. A person can even lose a job when the employer sees the screenshot of an employee speaking ill of him in a group chat. The careful analysis and use of media are always required to maintain a healthy balance between virtue and burden in the modern world. It is impossible to avoid media because of its immersion in people’s daily lives, so people need to adapt their behavior and learn the media literacy skills to use its potential to the fullest. Media appears not to be a virtue or burden on its own but rather with the people’s attached importance to it.