Being media literate is but one fundamental aspect of life in a time of complex planetary existence.

However, the book does not need to be read by starting at the beginning.

In fact, it was my investigation as to what was happening to me while taking a museum selfie that drove me to realize that I needed a new approach that did not seem to exist. An approach that would help me understand all of the influencing relations that were acting upon one another during my experience taking museum selfies.

Words are limited in their ability to faithfully represent the intended meaning behind them. In addition, words cut and separate; they are often thought of as individual carriers of meaning.

Looking around at people, especially when they are in a forced pause—waiting for a doctor’s visit, for a train, etc. (see Fig. 1.1)—often they are looking down at some technology rather than looking around and engaging with their immediate environment. They are immersed in technology that virtually transports them elsewhere.

In order to help guide an investigation into the various relations, the approach developed leverages the concept of intrasubjective mediation, which is the idea that we are—and continue to be—mediated by the constituting aspects of all of our relations.

As we focus on the effects of media on the subject, it is important to identify which human subject is being discussed.

He often explained it through the figure/ground analogy where one’s usual focus is on the figure (in this case the media’s content) and the ground (in this case the medium) goes unnoticed.

As humans, we are never standalone beings but always in relation; these relations are non-neutral,8 contributing to the co-constitution of our selves, the specific technology, and the world

While the four approaches in media literacy (cf. above) are effective in what they do, there are several concepts from other fields of study that can help create a more robust approach.

Media questions are important, then, but they only seem to me to be really significant if they are set in a far wider frame, rather than focusing just on media technologies themselves’ (684).

Some philosophers and media theorists approach media and technology as something that people, especially children, should be protected from.

For example, according to a recent Nielsen report, the average adult (over eighteen years of age) in the U.S. spends around 10 1/2 hours each day involved with some kind of media6 (Nielsen, 2019: 3)

In the United States, ‘Digital media use has increased considerably, with the average 12th grader in 2016 spending more than twice as much time online as in 2006’ (Twenge et al., 2019: 329).

Thus far, media literacy has focused mainly on developing the skills to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media messages, and has not focused sufficiently on the impact of the actual technological medium, how it enables and constrains both messages and media users.