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Letter

For the assignment, I sent this letter. I am writing to you in your capacity as a member of  the Subcommittee on Children and Families. I am a junior at BYU studying in the School of Family Life. I have just finished a class on how media impacts the family and human development. As a resident of Utah, I wanted to contact you about a problem I have learned about. Media currently objectifies women to the detriment of the development of our children. My goal both is to provide research about the side effects of the objectification of women and to request legislative reform. It is commonly agreed that sexual objectification is wrong, but what is not commonly understood are the negative side effects for children and family members. According to research found by Dr. Sarah Coyne, exposure to sexual media is associated with increased risky sex behaviors, permissive sexual attitudes, and a lower age in participation in sex. She found this was especially true for adolescents (https://doi....
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Anti-Social Media? or Social Media?

Does social media foster connection? Or does it encourage separation? Sometimes it's hard to tell. Through Facebook, you can keep connections with people from your hometown, mission, or classes. It can also be a way for you to connect with someone in class. Instagram can be a natural way for you to send memes or reels to a friend. Twitter (or X) can allow you to spread news.  But, these apps can also suck you into hours of scrolling.  Clearly, the separating factor in this is how we use it. Here is some unsolicited advice for what I have tried to help me keep social media social. Set a time limit for how long you can use apps. If you want to use it longer you can, but it is a reminder that can stop the doom scrolling. (15 minutes is a good starting point.) Open an app with one of three purposes: see how a specific friend is doing or check up generally on everyone or to look for something entertaining. Acknowledge what the purpose is. Before scrolling reels, decide before han...
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Food Glorious Food

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Food is pretty much my favorite thing. So why have I not posted about it yet? Fair question. Lets go for it!     As a child, I took food for granted. It was always there, and it always tasted good. I had to transition to living on my own a few years ago, and then I realized how important food was to me. I also realized that bad food is easier to make than good food. Toast can be burnt black. Pasta in fact can over cook. And Annie's Mac the third night in a row can get old. (Not sure if y'all had the same experience.)     Once I began missing good food, I realized I needed to find good recipes. That's when I explored food blogs. By now I have a few food favorite bloggers that I'd like to share!     For desserts and treats I love:  https://sugarspunrun.com .     For everyday food here are a couple great options:  https://www.onceuponachef.com/  & tastes better from scratch  https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/     F...
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International Treasures: K-Dramas, Britpop, and a Whole lot more

"International media"! What comes to mind when you hear those words?  "The British Invasion", the Beatles, Coldplay, BTS, BLACKPINK? Or Bollywood, Netflix K-dramas, or Anime? Those all flash through my head when I think of international media. I find that through engaging with international media, I have found greater understanding for other people and cultures. It is one thing to hear that people from one culture are a certain way. It is an entirely different thing to see the way other people feel. It allows people from other cultures to be more humanized. Here are several of the shows I have enjoyed form various places: Britain :     Sherlock     Pride and  Prejudice     The Great British Bake Off South Korea :     Crash landing on You     Fight My Way     While You were Sleeping     WISUE (Artist) Spain :     Beret (Artist) Finland :     Finnish Blood Swedish Heart (Movie) Austral...
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Technological Walls

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I have been reflecting on many of the topics in class recently: health concerns, sex and the media, family and the media, and advertising. I wanted to apply what I have been learning by setting up some "technological walls" (I need a better term for that). I wanted to limit the types of ads I could see and the possibility that I would run into sexual images. Have you ever been looking for memes on Instagram and then several of them use offensive language? Or an ad on YouTube which you know you didn't look up earlier? I have often accepted them as a fact of using the online world. But those are the exact scenarios that this week I have attempted to cut out. I began by going into my Instagram settings. I have not looked too deeply at them before today. It had many more features than I expected. You can control much of what you see! Here are the settings I changed: In content preferences I: Enabled show less sensitive content Added a filter to filter out posts with certain e...
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Media and the Family: Best Friends? or Worst Enemies?

 Think back to your childhood, what was your families relationship with media? Was your TV in the main room? Were there restrictions to when kids could download certain apps? How did your family talk about media?     Personally my family had a conservative relationship with media. We had a TV room, and we could only download instagram once we were old enough.     What is the most healthy though?      My belief is that media can really help a family be unified and have fun! At the same time, Video Games or Sports channels can take up too much time. I feel it is best if parents talk about what they want to focus on with their families. If the children are old enough, including them in the conversation could be helpful. The important part is that the way media is used is a choice, not an accident. What do you think?  What's healthy in your opinion?
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Provo Treasures: Provo Library

Have you been to the Provo Library before? It's that cool old timey building on center street. The one that is red brick and looks like it's been there for the last century or so.  I highly recommend. It feels like a perfect slice of Provo History, and a great place to access books. You feel a connection to the community there. It also has a beautiful ballroom and an art gallery with local art which rotates out. Regularly, they'll hold events for people in the community.     It's curious because libraries were once the center of new media and media consumption. Nowadays, those centers are online and in social media. Libraries are considered outdated. I remember as a kid going to the library, and it being packed. Now libraries only have a few patrons in them. Do you like going to the library? When was the last time you went to the library?
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