Duped: The Media & Pop Culture Influence Our Food Choices

Is gaming taking over the world?

Is gaming taking over the world?

The question in today’s society comes down to gaming. Is gaming taking over our society? McGonigal believes that gaming can be useful in saving the world.  She states in her TED talks video that the goal is to save the real world in real life and for this to happen people need to game.  The problem she states is that gamers don’t believe that they are as good at real life as they are in the gaming world. 

I believe that there is a major problem with video games and I do not agree with McGonigal to say the least.  I think that there are two major problems with her theory that video games can help us save the world.  Yes, they can be educational, but there are two major issues that lie here.  First, in video games you can’t die! You can always start over, use cheats to have unlimited life, and complete tasks that never could be accomplished in the “real world”.  Second, video games have cheats and walk-through’s.  If you don’t know where to go or what to do you can use an assisting guide to get you to the next point.  Yes a lot of times people have created these gaming guides but often times they come from the developers of the game.  My suggestion is that if these people are so great at creating realistic games on how to save the world, why can’t they start a revolution and save the world themselves? 

As a person studying psychology I view this new gaming addiction as a disorder.  Oftentimes people use it as a mask to hide from life problems.  In 2013 there will be a new DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) which will actually include gaming addictions.  People tend to neglect the world around them when they enter the tunnel vision of the gaming world.  There have been several cases of mothers that become engrossed in the online gaming industry and neglecting their young children, many of which have died. 

On June 26, 2012 a 29-year-old, Japanese mother, Yumiko Takahashi, found her child dead in his crib.  He apparently had been running a fever since June 24 and she neglected to feed, water, and even pay attention to the child  (LaCapria, 2012).  The mother became depressed and used the online world to reconnect with peers outside of her home.  She told police, “I have sought solace in chatting on the Internet to get connected to other people for three years since I got depressed for losing my son in an accident… Child raising is too much hassle (LaCapria, 2012).”  Alexandria Tobias, a mother in Jacksonville, Fl, shook her baby to death because he interrupted her while playing Farmville on a social networking site—Facebook.  “She told authorities she was so frustrated with her son's crying that she shook him, lit up a butt to "compose herself," and then proceeded to shake him again. She called for help after the baby stopped breathing, first telling cops that he'd hit his head after a dog knocked him off the couch. Her son's cause of death was later determined to be "abusive head trauma." (Schaffel, 2010).”

As we can plainly see video games engross people, people neglect the outside world around them, and therefore will never be useful in saving the world.  It only destroys it.  As I have also stated in my two reasons why I disagree with McGonigal, we do not have unlimited lives in the “real world” and we do not always have the answers or know how to accomplish the tasks.  There is also the thing of money.  It becomes much easier and cheaper to pretend to save the world by purchasing a video game for around $50 rather than worrying about trying to find millions to complete the tasks in real life. 

Sources

LaCapria, Kim. "Mom Ignores Dead Baby For Full Day While Chatting on Web, Says Raising Kids Is Too Much Hassle." Review. Web log post. The Inquisitr. N.p., 30 June 2012. Web. 12 Nov. 2012. <http://www.inquisitr.com/266909/mom-ignores-dead-baby-for-full-day-while-chatting-on-web-says-raising-kids-is-too-much-hassle/>.

Schaffel, Vivian M. "SAD! Mom Kills Baby over 'FarmVille'! | Momlogic.com." Momlogic.com. N.p., 1 Nov. 2010. Web. 12 Nov. 2012. <http://www.momlogic.com/2010/11/sad_mom_kills_baby_over_farmville.php>.

The Truth of Ellen

The Truth of Ellen

I remember watching The Ellen Show every week from the start of the season until the show was canceled.  The show began with Ellen being a nanny to young children—long hair with bangs in the front—very humorous women, but not very attractive.  As a child I grew up in a home with parents of a strong Christian background and therefore I was severely restricted on the shows I watched and music I listened too.  So naturally, when Ellen came out as a gay, I was no longer allowed to watch her program (although I did it behind my parents back anyways).  Ellen was a hero to me.  It brought out controversy that played a role in my family life for many years, the lies and deceit that covered up truth.  The reason my parents were so against me watching or knowing about “gay people” was that they covered a secret for so long.  My Uncle passed away in 1989, and I was told for many years that it was from cancer.  The story that he had cancer spilled into my teenage years and for many years, I believed that my uncle and I were extremely close.  When Ellen came out as gay in 1997—I was now 16—I began to question why all of a sudden I was not allowed to watch her show.  The truth of my uncle also finally came out 8 years later!  I found out that, he was also gay, and that he died of one of the first-ever diagnosed cases of AIDS.  It was hurtful to find out something so big in my family history many years later.  Ellen was a hero to me because of this.  I feel that her coming out on national television reveled a long time secret.  Who knows how long this lie would’ve continued to grow if it wasn’t for her.  I still have a lot of hatred towards my parents from hiding it from me for many years.  They viewed it as protection.  When I did find out I bottled it up and didn’t tell anyone about it for a long time, my parents made me feel that it was an embarrassment to deal with.  Today I simply realize that it was his life choice and it was in a time-period that AIDS was a newly diagnosed disease. 

I also believe Ellen was a hero for coming out when she did because it changed America.  Although there was much controversy and discomfort with her marital views, it made people understand that we are not all created equally!  I feel that Ellen’s views made people come to terms more with the realization of separation within church and state.  Before 1970, the concept of gays was morally forbidden and rejected.  “Gayness” was treated like a disease.    Ellen began a revolution.  Although many still feel the strong beliefs of the church and monogamous heterosexual marriage, more people have come to view the monogamous part of marriage/relationship as a more important role.  Today people still struggle with the concept of gay marriages, but it is being viewed as more of a freedom of choice than it was pre-1997.  Ellen is still viewed as #1 amongst the gay community for her revolutionary efforts.   Although many states still do not allow and recognize the legality of gay marriages, most all of them do recognize domestic partnership.  I agree completely with Bonnie Dow’s (2001) view on gays when she states, “to hate gays is to hate someone that he or she loves and is instantly transformed as a result (pg 131).”  I did not choose a homosexual lifestyle for myself, but I feel that if I was to do so, that it would be more accepted by my parents today than it was with my uncle pre-1997.  (To learn more about Ellen’s coming out view her video biography at http://www.biography.com/people/ellen-degeneres-9542420/videos/ellen-degeneres-full-episode-2244678863)

Sources

Dow, B. J. (2001). Ellen, Television, and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 123-140.

Frilly In Pink

Frilly in Pink

Girls in pink tutus, tiaras, and ball gowns…fancy shoes, hair in perfect curls, and money in her pocket.  To America, this defines a princess.  A princess can shop any place she wants own the fanciest of things, spend top dollar and demand to be treated like a princess any place she goes. 

We face this problem in society today.  The media overly portrays to us that it is ok to be a self-centered arrogant princess bitch.  Often times the “princess” has been treated and portrayed as a princess from birth.  Only wearing pink and frills, being told that she is the princess, and getting anything, she wants and doesn’t need.  I have often noticed this occurs in the youngest child that especially if it is a girl, also if the girl is an only child.  More often, these “types” of girls are “spoiled”, treated like a princess, and get away with just about everything.  This has often ruined many families.  My aunt in particular is one that can be called “princess”.  She was the youngest of 4 children—3 girls and a boy—and of course very spoiled.  She usually got away with everything in life, and my grandparents admitted it.  Even into her adult years, she still received more of an acceptance from my grandparents than the others did.  She is very princess like in the sense that she refused to live in a shabby home, or clothing that was “cheap”, she had to have the most perfect items available.  The problem with growing up being treated like a princess is that when reality hits, those types of women/girls don’t know how to handle it!  My aunt went through some troubles in her marriage because things weren’t perfect and she couldn’t have children, she left her husband that treated her like a queen over the fact that the option of kids was not possible (on her end of things).  Reality set in when she met a man that treated her like a princess, but not in a sense that she was used to….it began to fade the longer they spent together.  Eventually she realized they could not afford the most expensive items on the market and settled for a trailer home.  She lost her job and worked at a bar to make up income, her life became depressing.  She was a victim of the princess culture.  She became severely depressed, ended up finding out she had MS and when my grandfather remarried she lost her “princess status” to the step-kids. 

I think that because the media overly portrays that it is ok to be a princess and that any girl can be a princess, which you will forever be a princess and nothing bad can happen to you!  The problem is that they are more susceptible to becoming severely depressed or other clinical issues that can protrude into daily activities.  Why?....because these people don’t know how to handle NOT being spoiled, and not having the best of the best and everything you want at the drop of a dime! 

A BOLD Perspective on Food

A Bold Perspective on Food

Over the past few decades, our food habits have changed drastically.  Ranging from how we eat to the types of foods, we consume.  Does anyone even pay attention to what is actually going into his or her body?  It was not until recently when movies like: Super-Size Me and Food, Inc. hit the media that people began to pay attention to the “junk” that would fill their system.  Chemically processed foods have become a “brand” to our nation ever since there was solution to the 1970 inflation cost in farming.  Local farmers entered a depression with the spike in food costs.  As the food prices started to decrease, there were more people in the world and more people mean more food.  The farmers had a rough time keeping up with the production of food while keeping the costs low.  So what was the solution?...Factory Farming! 

Factory farming was able to provide mass food production at lower costs.  How could we be so blind to the mass changing in food?  Factory farms took over control of the food industry; this allowed them to mass produce food providing more food at lower cost.  Unfortunately, there is a high price to pay for the low cost.   The FDA has allowed many standards in food production that they label as “natural and unavoidable” (Defect Levels Handbook, 2011).  As a standard the FDA now allows up-to 30 insect fragments and one rat hair per 100 grams of peanut butter (Defect Levels Handbook, 2011).  Tomato sauce averages a mold count of about “6 sub-samples is 34% or more and the counts of all of the sub-samples are more than 30% (Defect Levels Handbook, 2011).”  Most of the food that is now being processed in factories have lower regulations than say an organic farmer!  It is very common to find mold, rat hair/fecal matter, insect fragments, and fly eggs in many of our fruit and vegetable products. 

Food, Inc. also brought into perspective for most people the simple fact that our meat is no better than our fruits and veggies!  Today more than 8 million women are at higher risks with bladder infections that have no cure (Hartman, 2012).  Why?  Because chicken farming also became part of our factory farms, when eating chicken you are consuming high doses of antibiotics.  When you consume large doses of antibiotics your body eventually begins to reject them, therefore, when you seek treatment for an infection you are left lying hopeless!  Hartman (2012) writes, “A growing number of medical researchers say more than 8 million women are at risk of difficult-to-treat bladder infections because super-bugs – resistant to antibiotics and growing in chickens – are being transmitted to humans in the form of E. coli.” 

You may have heard the recent buzz about GMO’s, but what is it?  GMO stands for genetically modified organism! Yes, that’s right ORGANISM! They are foods that are so processed that we cannot even call them “food”.  Almost all of the foods you see on the shelf at your local grocer now contain GMOs.  There have been several bills proposed to congress, in attempts to require companies to place a GMO label on their packaging.  As of today, this is still an ongoing battle!  “The biotechnology industry is exploiting this loophole to push millions of tons of GM crops into the EU food supply, unnoticed by consumers.  This is despite the fact that plentiful supplies of GM-free animal feed are available (Light, 2012).”  

We have an overabundance of corn; corn is easy to grow taking little time.  Corn has been the sole ingredient in many of our foods.  It is now what we feed our cattle, chicken, fish, pigs, and humans.  Many of our products consume “corn material”, even things that you may never have thought about, such as: animal feed, diapers, batteries, juice, soda, gum, soap, paint and cosmetics, just to name a few!  What does this mean for our animals?

Animals especially cows have a highly complex digestive system, one that is made to feed on nature—grass!  Factories looked for ways to speed up the production of these animals and corn was the way to go.  When cows especially, eat corn, they become fatter more quickly—14 months—allowing them to be sent to the slaughterhouse and placed on the shelf in half the time (Pollan, n.d).  Pollan (n.d) states, “The problem with this system, or one of the problems with this system, is that cows are not evolved to digest corn.  It creates all sorts of problems for them. The rumen (cow’s stomach) is designed for grass.  And corn is just too rich, too starchy.  So as soon as you introduce corn, the animal is liable to get sick.”  Since the factory farming process has been on the rise, we have seen higher outbreaks of E.Coli H7:0157 infecting many humans.  Factor standards have changed the way they process meat, in attempts to prevent E.Coli outbreaks.  The meat is now cleansed in high levels of ammonia…how is this any safer to humans?  

I believe that more people need to be aware of safety standards and production standards when it comes to consumption.  We allow this cycle to continue by purchasing the products and not taking account for our own actions.  The more people that enter the world, the larger amounts of food that will be consumed, thus allowing the FDA to continue allowing factories to mass produce foods.  It is our job to stand up for what we wish to consume.  It is our job to make sure that we are well educated in this aspect.  The media will only notify us if there has been an outbreak, and only if the outbreak consumes/harms enough people.  As a favor to yourself and your families….become educated!

Sources

Defect Levels Handbook. (2011, November 09). Retrieved from FDA: http://www.fda.gov/food/guidancecomplianceregulatoryinformation/guidancedocuments/sanitation/ucm056174.htm

Hartman, B. (2012, July 11). REPORT: Superbug Dangers in Chicken Linked to 8 Million At-Risk Women. Retrieved from ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/07/11/superbug-dangers-in-chicken-linked-to-8-million-at-risk-women/

Light, A. (2012, March 12). Health Studies - The Dangers of Meat Consumption: Cancer, Heart Disease, Diabetes. Retrieved from Natural Cures: http://humansarehealthy.com/2012/03/health-studies-dangers-meat-consumption.html

Pollan, M. (n.d). Interview Michael Pollan. Retrieved from Frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/interviews/pollan.html

Social Loneliness and acceptance

Social Loneliness

                Ever since the rise of internet popularity in 1996, the American people have become more secluded.  Many people today have confined themselves to a comfortable, single home life, socializing only through the internet and text messages.  Lack of contact in the world is leading people to more psychological and health problems.  The number of users in social media sites like twitter, Facebook, and MySpace has more than doubled since 2005.  As social media is growing so are the ways that we can easily access these sites.  In the past 5 years we have seen technology grow to the extreme levels with smart phones, tablets, and any other portable computer device we can take on the go.  These components are now equipped with apps that allow us to link quickly to social media sites.  Why has social networking become so highly used?  Well for one we find that the technology to use the media and networking sites has now come at an affordable to cost to the average consumer.  Prior to the year 2000 computers and cell-phones were fairly costly and only the rich were known for carrying high-technological devices around with them daily.  Therefore social networking had very little effect on the average consumer.  Today nearly every business partakes in some form of social networking; it is a cheaper, more effective way to advertise their business and products.

                What people don’t realize is that we are easily drawn in to social media sites.  Not only does it create social loneliness, but it has been shown to create severe mental and other health related issues.  Not only is it creating health issues, but it also has been linked to several environmental issues.  First we will tackle the issue of loneliness itself.  Today technology allows that once out-casted kid to have a place in the world, to make friends and feel the pride and coolness they do not receive in a physical social environment.  It is best stated by Olds & Schwartz (2009), “when we find ourselves isolated, by standing tall in our own minds, side by side with self-reliant heroes, each of us is suddenly no longer alone but part of a group… The psychological magic becomes the spoonful of sugar that makes painful experience of finding ourselves left out easier to swallow.”  Although social media allows us to feel as if we finally fit in to a crowd that may not have been possible before, when we face the reality of it we find that we are more depressed and alone then once thought. Parents that become engrossed in the world of social media, show children, especially teens that social alienation is acceptable.  As part of human nature we need to feel nurtured by another individual.  The effects seem to be at the highest in teenage girls.  When a parent, especially the mother neglects contact with her teenage daughter it causes higher levels of depression and feelings of being socially unaccepted.  Abernathy states (n.d.), “In keeping with her alienation from the mother, the high risk individual is unlikely to have satisfying friendships with other women.  She feels that friendships with women are not worth much, apparently a reflection of her own low self-esteem.  A corollary is that her reportedly most important relationships have been with men.  However, she experiences tension in these interactions, being fearful of not meeting the man's expectations and often feeling disconcertingly dependent and infantilized.”  Because of natural feelings of wanting to be socially accepted teenage girls do often turn to a man for comfort and feelings of acceptance.  This is why teenage pregnancy is once again on the rise!  Women have a higher tendency to feel the need to be accepted than men.  When a man makes a gesture or makes a socially isolated women feel accepted she is more likely to fall into the “love trap”, and doing things that she knows may not be morally right. 

                Many people do not realize the effects that social loneliness has on their health.  Many people that suffer from stress due to loneliness show signs in decreasing health by: blood pressure, sleep problems, adrenocortical activity, diminished immunity, white blood cell count, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and cholesterol are examples of the physiological problems associated with loneliness (Leikas, Saariluoma, Rousi, Kuisma, & Vilpponen, 2012).  House (2001) confirms, “The magnitude of risk associated with social isolation is comparable with that of cigarette smoking and other major biomedical and psychosocial risk factors… Without yet knowing exactly how and why cigarette smoking is damaging to health, much has been done to reduce it and ameliorate its effects. We should be able to do the same with social isolation.”  Often times these health issues go undiagnosed because of social sites like Web M.D.  People today feel that they can diagnose themselves via the internet and attempt home remedies to cure the ailment, when there may very well be a bigger underlying problem.

                On the final note, social isolation leads to the over-use of planet resources.  Today we even find more single household units than ever before.  Single households place a strain on our ecological health.  When a person is extremely lonely and do not have enough people in their lives they often times turn to objects that define their identity through possessions rather than one’s place in society (Olds & Schwartz, 2009).  Because people are choosing to live in single family units we are depleting the Earth’s resources faster than technology allows us to replenish it.  Jowit (2008) states, “The Living Planet report calculates that humans are using 30% more resources than the Earth can replenish each year, which is leading to deforestation, degraded soils, polluted air and water, and dramatic declines in numbers of fish and other species.”   Social isolation also increases the amount of obesity we see in society.  People are consuming hirer amounts of food from being in a state of depression which leads to more cryogenically processed foods, which also creates unhealthiness and obesity in individuals.  The planets electricity resources are also declining from the greater use of technological devices being on for longer periods of time. 

                So to put it short and simple, social media sites do make us feel lonely, but they also make us feel socially accepted when we are not otherwise made to feel acceptance.  In the long run social media does more harm than good by running out Earth’s natural supplies and creating more undiagnosed health problems.  We find more people opting to work from home then to be out in the world. We find more parents taking to social sites and becoming addicted to the social acceptance or games and possibly even both.  We have become less intelligent in the world and creating more communication problems within marriages.  Social media creates deindividuation in people, meaning we lose our self-awareness of our surroundings and accountability for our own actions.  We are more likely to become angry and aggressive in an online setting, which can carry out into the outside world when we do have to actually make contact with others in society.  We simply just lose our sense of self (forget how to be normal)!!!

References

Abernathy, V. (n.d.). Illegitimate conception among teenagers. American Journal of Public Health, 662-664.

House, J. S. (2001, March 1). Social isolation kills, but how and why? Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 63, 273-274.

Jowit, J. (2008, October 28). World is facing a natural resources crisis worse than financial crunch. Retrieved from TheGuardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/29/climatechange-endangeredhabitats

Leikas, J., Saariluoma, P., Rousi, R. A., Kuisma, E., & Vilpponen, H. (2012). Life-based design to combat loneliness among older people. The Journal of Community Informatics .

Marchie, S. (2012, May). Is Facebook making us lonely? The Atlantic.

Olds, J., & Schwartz, R. S. (2009, March-April). The Lonely American. UTNE Reader.