Benefits of constant media use far and few between

BY ERIN K. O'NEILL

We live in a media age. The young folks are submerged in a complex media landscape that involves being constantly connected to the Internet. Americans aged 8 to 18 years old spend more than 7 1/2 hours a day in front of a screen, be it television, computer, iPod or smart phone.

Ever watched TV and surfed the web at the same time?  According to the Kaiser Family Foundation study, since more than one medium is being used at a time, a person can actually pack in close to 11 hours of media and Internet time per day.

The Millennial Generation, or those among us who are somewhere between adolescence and late twenty-something, modus operandi is to be hyper-connected all the time. If I am in front of a computer I am also logged into Facebook, Twitter and  both of my e-mail accounts (at least). I often boot up my computer as soon as I wake in the morning, and it stays on and open until I go to sleep at night — closing only when I need to relocate to another class or Internet connection.

I have been wondering lately, however, if this normalization of absurd amounts of screen time is all that good. Sure, there are benefits to online attachments. I can find academic articles in moments for classes, and it saves paper to use electronic textbooks and consume news media online. I also talk to my sister a lot more often than I did before we were both on Facebook. But in all honesty, I am not doing any of these laudable things in 95 percent of my time connected to the web.

For example: have you seen Go Fug Yourself? Two chicks in LA make very snarky fun of terrible celebrity fashion. Could there be a more sublime time waster? Or, when I’m not spending time reading Texts From Last Night, where unfortunate text messages are revealed, I am perusing Overheard in the Newsroom, where journalists' unfortunate conversations are posted. I have more than one list of bookmarks in my net browser, organized by category, where more gems of worthless time suck can be found.

Maybe I just need some new blogs to destroy my days with, but this endless Internet routine is just plain boring. Nothing really exciting happens on the Internet — my friends make meaningless observations on Twitter, I get slews of emails from MU administration, and I obsessively read the New York Times (and not usually the really newsy part).

There is a social pressure not only to be constantly connected but also to be constantly seeking stimulation. There is no just having a coffee, you must be online and having a coffee, or texting and having a coffee. It is infinitely frustrating to want to sit and read a book but feel the necessity to check in online every hour. Nothing is really happening, no one said anything that can’t wait until the book is read, but it is imperative to be present online.

The Internet age has many advantages. An entire generation of Americans is dependent on portable communications devices to stave off the smallest amounts of ennui. The philosophical standard for existence is no longer “cogito, ergo sum” (not that this standard was ever the final word on the proof of existence). We now subscribe to: I am online, therefore I am.

Erin K. O'Neill is a former assistant director of photography and page designer for the Missourian. She is also a master's degree candidate at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Published in the Columbia Missourian on Wednesday, January 27, 2010.

Fear of flying? Blame the bureaucracy

BY ERIN K. O'NEILL

Wasn’t the Department of Homeland Security supposed to fix this mess?

This mess being the epic failure to “collate” the intelligence on Christmas Airplane Underwear Bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. And there were more indicators of Abdulmutallab’s plans than there are health warnings on cigarette packets.  But only bureaucrats think adding another layer of bureaucracy will fix the problems with bureaucracy.

“The U.S. government had the information — scattered throughout the system — to potentially uncover this plot and disrupt the attack,” President Barack Obama said at a news conference on Jan. 7.  “Rather than a failure to collect or share intelligence, this was a failure to connect and understand the intelligence that we already had.”

Hey, that’s super-comforting. Just to be clear, the American intelligence community knew that Yemen is a hot spot for anti-American terrorism. Abdulmutallab’s own father tried to turn him in as a potential terrorism threat to a CIA agent at the U.S. embassy in Nigeria two months ago. He was put on a security watch list in the United Kingdom after his student visa application was flagged.

And then it was reported that Abdulmutallab paid $2,831 in cash for a one-way ticket from Lagos to Detroit (with a layover in Amsterdam), didn’t check any luggage and didn't give the airline any contact information. And yet, none of this information made it anywhere near a no-fly list.

Even without the father’s warning to the CIA or the UK security watch list, isn’t this everything we’re supposed to be looking for after Sept. 11, 2001?

Now, TSA is trying to fix the security problems with more stringent and invasive searches in airports. Apparently, getting on an airplane is tantamount to probable cause for TSA agents to not only take off your shoes and search your carry-on bags but also to force you to submit to full-body scans.

This process only makes travel by airplane more onerous for the average citizen, and I see little evidence that it actually makes air travel any safer. Americans are xenophobic enough without having to face long, slow lines that end in pat-down searches.

There’s no way any TSA agent is getting anywhere near my granny panties, even if that is where Abdulmutallab hid the explosives.

What saved Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day from pentaerythritol tetranitrate explosives sewn into Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s underwear was very clearly not the work of intelligence agencies or anti-terrorism bureaucracy, or even airport security checkpoints. It was alert passengers on the flight who heard the first small explosion, jumped on Abdulmutallab as his lap burst into flame, alerted flight attendants to put out the fire and prevented the PETN from igniting and blowing a hole in the plane, which would have caused it to crash.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab shouldn’t have made it on the plane in the first place.

Erin K. O'Neill is a former assistant director of photography and page designer for the Missourian. She is also a master's degree candidate at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Published in the Columbia Missourian on Wednesday, January 13, 2010.