Maggie Franke

Media Studies

“Me in Media” Paper

Tuesday, September 5th, 2017

Classmate proofreader: __________________________

Proofreader signature: ___________________________

Trying and Failing to Fit In(stagram)

When my sister and I were young, we never stopped imagining. We would constantly

play “pretend” outside without our neighborhood friends and make up stories about dragons,

animals, warriors and other various creatures inspired by the many books my sister and I read.

Television was the fastest and easiest form of communication with the outside world in my

house. We would watch the morning and evening news shows when they came on, and my sister

and I would watch our favorite kids shows on the public broadcast station. Arthur was our

favorite because he was a “normal kid,” and we were “normal kids” too. My first vague memory

of media is from September 1, 2001. I remember standing in the kitchen and trying to see what

my mom continued to cover up with her hands and her voice of “Don’t look Maggie! Don’t

look!” I could not help myself, and my curiosity kept me moving and leaning for a view of the

screen. I caught a long glimpse of the second plane crashing into the building. With that my mom

sat on the floor with me and held my head close to her. I did not understand what I had seen, but

my curiosity had been satisfied.

My sister and I also grew up without cable. My friends are always shocked to hear that I

did not watch Spongebob, Hannah Montana, High School Musical (1, 2 or 3), Kim Possible,

Page 1!
Teen Titans or any show that they loved so much and watched religiously. Time seemed to stop

whenever their shows came on. We would be outside playing a game of soccer in the backyard,

but their moms would each say, “[Insert cable kids show here] is on!” We would stop what we

were doing and run inside to catch the show. I did not really like them all that much because they

seemed strange to me. The kids in the shows were always boisterously screaming about

something they wanted, disobeying their parents, sneaking out to meet the opposite gender, and I

did not have much experience with any of those things. I did not get what “kissing” was like. I

could not comprehend disobeying my parents, the two greatest people in the world.

I became curious about nearly everything I did not understand, but I was more fascinated

with what did not exist in the real world. From Eragon to The Lord of the Rings to The Lightning

Thief, my sister and I read profusely through middle school. If there was a new fictional book,

we found it, read it, and dreamed about it. While the coolest kids in my grade were using flip

phones and slide keyboards for texting and calling, I was staring out the window imagining

myself fighting some battle against evil. My hip friends in school continued to show me their

new gadgets, and I continued to watch my classmates drift away from me. They did not want to

go outside and turn their trees into castles or their roads into rivers. I did not understand why

they treated me strangely. I knew people in my middle school who spread “digital rumors” about

girls who had hooked up with this guy who was dating this other girl who actually did not like

him at all. I did not want to be a part of it, but before I knew it a cell phone was in my hands.

My first cell phone was a blue sliding phone with a tiny keyboard. I used it to text my

parents, my sister, and my closest friends. I do not remember it being a big part of my life at all.

It was strictly a means of communicating with someone when I had to, not necessarily when I

Page 2!
wanted to. A few of my friends had pink razor flip phones, which were all the rage. Internet on

my phone cost a lot of money, and my parents consistently told me to never try accessing it on

my cell phone. I did not realize that I was “missing out” on so much because I did not pay

attention to what everyone else was doing. I had my friends to sit with at lunch, teammates to

swim with, and a family to hang out with. I did not need to constantly be in touch with everyone.

This changed when I saw my first friend with an iPhone.

I suddenly, without explanation, felt like I had to have one. I never had a 3G iPhone, a

3GS iPhone, an iPhone 4. In seventh and eighth grade, I felt like I was falling behind the

unspoken “pack” of cool kids. For a while I felt like an outsider, and people seemed to always be

taking selfies, posting pictures on Facebook, iMessaging each other with various pieces of gossip

that I would hear about when it had already become “old news.” I got my first iPhone the

summer of my freshman year. I barely used it. I was afraid of dropping it, breaking it, messing it

up, or doing anything to ruin my new and sacred possession. I felt like I was in the “in crowd”

just because I had an iPhone. I got an email and a Facebook that same year, and I quickly

updated everything as much as I could. I played on Webkinz, as the coolest high school freshman

did. I had a few close friends, but I never felt like I had a consistent friend group. They always

seems to make group messages without me and arrange hangouts without me.

My junior and senior year of high school, I used media almost all the time. I was

extremely involved with my high school’s newspaper, and I always had a network of people to

interview, contact, assign stories to, or just ask about news going in our school. I had the phone

number of many of the athletes in my class from the football team to the soccer team to the

synchronized swim team. Senior year, I hit a peak when I was texting six of the varsity hockey

Page 3!
players all at the same time. It was nice at points because I felt like an outsider, but I also knew

so much about them. Everyone knew who I was, and I had the phone number of nearly every

elite person in my grade. I felt like I was finally not missing out. I posted on my Instagram and

Facebook as much as humanly possible. I even ran the Instagram for our newspaper; I would

post live updates from sporting events. I invested lots of energy in order to feel like I was a part

of them instead of excluded. One thing always seemed to keep me out of the coolest

conversations: my commitment to my faith. Since I posted so much on my Instagram and

Facebook and Twitter, people saw my life through the frame I presented it in. I was the cute girl

who was a Sunday-school teacher for four-year-olds and was close with her parents. My

acquaintances did not talk shit about people in front of me, and their language was not the honest

bullshit they used around their friend group. No one told me who they fucked on Friday or how

wasted they got on Saturday because they assumed that I would condemn them on Sunday.

Social media was the mask I hid behind, and it prevented people from being totally honest with

me. Some of my close friends now have confessed to me that they did not think I was

approachable based upon what I posted online.

Media brought me up, but it has weighed me down. I desire so much to fit in with the

people around me that I sacrifice my time, energy, self-image, and sleep to the one thing that

guarantees my partial acceptance with my peers. I look at my friend’s pages on Instagram

primarily and find myself constantly compared myself to them. Their hair is always thicker and

prettier than mine. Their shape is always has more curves and more sexiness than mine. Their

clothes are always more fashionable than mine. They always have what I want, and I always

want what I do not have. I am never at peace with media at my fingertips, but I cannot bring

Page 4!
myself to let go of my constant connection either. Media masks my problems, my friends’

problems, everyone’s problems. It is always a false representation of the reality of a person’s life,

the demons eating away their hearts with sins of jealousy, greed and vanity. Once a year I am

able to escape it all.

My dad and I drive to central Ontario to go on a fishing trip. They fly us out to a decent-

sized lake on a float plane where we are left behind. There is one cabin, four boats, and hundreds

of miles between us and civilization. Nature in its purest form has not been corrupted by social

media. Pictures have never done it justice, and they never will. Somehow, I always know this,

and I find comfort in experiencing nature the way that it is. This little piece of preserved northern

wilderness is my safe haven. There is no service at all, and there is no way for anyone to contact

us. I truly unplug, and I am happiest unplugged. The free air cleans out all the gunk from the

year, and it’s similar to a weight being lifted off my shoulders.

Media has always had a changing role in my life, and I will never be able to escape it

because I need to study it. I want to find a way to escape it, but still utilize the good things about

it. In-person, I give people an unmasked perspective of my life: a struggling, sad sinner. Social

media glorifies that which disobeyed God in the first place by giving a “perfect” perception of

man. A post with a thousand likes of a beautiful girl and her beautiful boyfriend on the beach was

my #goals for too long. My eyes need to look to the true, perfect Christ.

Page 5!