Disney:Our Childhood In A Nutshell

Childhood Memories

When someone asks you about your childhood, what comes to mind? Many people would include the music they heard, the dolls they played with, and movies they watched.  The first movie to jump start the legacy came out in 1923. Disney movies are ones that stay in the memories of many for generations.

Waiting For Prince Charming 

Throughout the extended amount of Disney movies that have been released, most have one common theme. The common theme within these movies is about a female being saved by a male and they live happily ever after. By doing this, Disney movies portray that women need a man to come save them in order to be happy. Essentially making the generalization that women are dependent on men to reach happiness in life. When the “prince” or male in these Disney movies save the “princess” it is also illustrating the weakness of the woman. When saving these women in the movies, they must fight through battles and get through obstacles. When showing that the man is the one to fight through all to save the princess, it makes the assumption that women are unable to fight for themselves and men are stronger than women.

Perfection

Another common theme found in Disney movies is the image of perfection. All the princesses who star in these movies have a particular image. They all have perfect hair, faces, body shape, and makeup. In other words, these characters who play the princesses are perfect. But is this reality? Do all women really look this perfect in real life?

These images that are being exposed to children in Disney films send out the wrong messages. A standard is already being set for children when watching these types of movies on a regular basis. Subconsciously in the minds of young children, they will have the perception that they are supposed to look this particular way.

Surreal

What these Disney movies have portrayed in the past have impacted many lives including my own. These movies are watched at young ages, therefor, at such a young age one already has an idea planted in their minds about how they are expected to look or act.

Growing up with these movies is wonderful and entertaining. The reason why these movies are so entertaining and catchy is because we adapt to the themes that are being presented in each movie. The thrill of being saved by the prince is a feeling that makes a little girls happy, it is a relieving feeling that brings joy. But is this reality?

Disney movies along with the media that has progressively evolved and continues to evolve correlate with one another. The way media portrays women and men to be stands by the same ideals that Disney movies stand by. The images celebrities have are close to being perfect. They are expected to dress, look, feel, and be a certain way.

However, in recent years, the ideal of women being saved by men like in Disney movies has changed. Women are looked at to be more independent and self sufficient. They can be as strong as men and do anything a man can do.

Disney Engraved In Us

Growing up with Disney movies along with the media that surrounds it is something that impacts us enormously. The ideals growing up were mainly shaped by these movies. It was believed a man was needed in the lives of women to be happy. Looking at our mothers and fathers as a happy couple as children showed that a father was the savior of the mother, at least that is what was believed. But what happens when a happy couple separates? They are no longer this ideally happily ever after couple that the princess and prince showed on T.V.

Getting Your Hopes Up

When children see their parents happily together they may relate this to the princess stories they saw in their Disney movies. But when something goes wrong this idea is broken. It may cause confusion in the minds of children. The media expectations as well as the expectations portrayed in movies shape the minds of children, when these ideals that are engraved in our minds our broken, reality sets in. This is the moment when children realize that reality is different from what movies display.

But I Want To Have Pretty Long Hair

Watching movies is something that really sets expectations for children in context of physically looking a particular way. Since the Disney movies portray the princesses to look perfect with long pretty hair and skinny bodies, this is what many little girls growing up may want and make priority.

We always want what we can’t have. As a young girl with curly short hair, long straight hair was always a desire because looking back at Repunzel or Sleeping Beauty they had it. This particular way of looking was a desired one which has the ability to make girls self-conscious. That is just one of the many examples that causes difficulties in children’s lives deriving from these Disney movies.

Generation Y

“If We Are Not Facebook Friends, It Is Not Official”

How many times have you heard this phrase: “If you are not Facebook friends it is not official”? But what does “official” really mean? Does this mean that if you are not electronically friends with someone in social media you are not friends at all? Well, interestingly enough, this is how most of the millennial generation bases a friendship on.

Before social media consumed the lives we live, when you met somebody out, what was the first thing you would ask them if you wanted to see them, or hand out with them again? Most of the time it would be “what is your number?” or in fact it may have been”what is your house number”?

Today we are living in a society where are main means of communication is through social media. Social media is how we meet people, get to know people, discover things, keep in touch with people and anything involving communication between a group of senders or sender and receivers or receiver.

“Like If You…..”

Generation Y is the generation that displays the most non-physical contact with people, yet still communicating constantly. According to USA Today, this generation is the most socially conscious generation since World War II. This generation is one to have the most peer to peer interactions with one another and are the ones to keep the image their Facebook friends perceive to have of them as very valuable. Facebook along with other social networks such as Twitter, Instagram, etc. have created a standard to try to look the best you can, try to surpass others, be competitive, and care so much about the image others have of you through the “like” buttons on statuses, pictures or videos, “retweets” or “#reposts”.

Not only are the peer to peer interactions on social networks being held to high esteem, but also the interactions people have with celebrities. Today, anyone can “like” a celebrities page, which makes them feel important. But by “liking” a celebrities page, it is essentially subscribing to them keeping up to that celebrities standards. When a person “likes” a celebrities page they will get daily photos and quotes that this celebrity supposedly represents, inevitably setting a standard for people using these networks to keep up with. With that being said, young kids are all over these networks. The examples these networks illustrate are not the most positive impacting on the lives of young ones. If one has an account, appropriate or not if it is circulating the social networks it will reach EVERYONE!

I Have 3,000 Friends

As stated before, these social networks have become competitive. Competition derives from the number of friends or followers you have, the higher the number, the “cooler” you are. These social networks are essentially a popularity contest. For generation Y, the quality of friends is not of importance anymore, instead the quantity of friends is what matters. 

Think about it, do you know every single one of your friends on Facebook or the 500 followers you have on Twitter or Instagram? Most people would answer that question with a “NO”.So, if you answer that question with a “no”, you may communicate with some of those “friends” you have through messages or pictures, but do you ever physically see them? With these networks seeing each other outside of social media is not a priority anymore.

These social media networks have created a medium in which people can feel valued by looking at the number of friends they have, or by looking at how many notifications they have. These insignificant notifications and numbers are sadly the basis of the self esteem young adults and even adults have now days.

Catfish

Along with boosting ones self esteem, social networks have created a medium in which people can meet without even knowing each other at all. People can search for random names or Facebook even has a side bar of “You May Know” people that pop up every time you log in. This accessibility to meeting people through just seeing their pictures and messaging is something that is progressively getting more dangerous for young children and even young adults.

The facilitated access to the world is casing more and more people to have stalkers and people who may harm them. Due to the value that people have for Facebook, many embrace strangers and at times get themselves into trouble. With the simple contact these social media networks give, predators can eventually hack into accounts, and find personal information about users.

People on social media may be real or may be made up, you may never know if you never met them in person. This notion brings the subject of “catfish” within these social networks. “Catfish” are people who create false profiles in hopes of being able to seduce people on social networks. Clearly there are many corrupt people in the world we live in. The social networks that are progressively getting more complex as time passes and more intrusive in peoples lives are only making it easier for these corrupt people to act upon their thoughts and cause tragedies and crime.

 

2035…Will You Be Living In A Utopian World or Dystopian World?

Have you ever thought what your life is going to be like in the year 2035? How old will you be? How do you think your life will have changed at this point?

What factors of society and technology have changed your life? We can all make predictions, but nothing is guaranteed….

 

Life Twenty Years Ago vs. Life Today

Can you think of how you life was 20 years ago? Life was not as easy as we have it today. Technologies developed to help us communicate, discover, and use on a regular basis were extremely different. If you think about it hard, there was no such thing as a smart phone back in the 90’s or the accessibility to the world wide web from anywhere you please to be. Back in those years communication mediums were limited to just a house phone, large cell phones, and “snail mail”. As the years progressed within the span of these 20 years many things were developed to help facilitate our lives on a daily basis. Things such as email, browsing, WIFI, instant messaging, social networks,Google, listening to music along with music storage, cameras, etc. have all been technologically developed to become available at all times anywhere around the world. Not only are these things available to most people, but they are able to be accessed through electronics developed that are the size of a persons palm.

Your Life Today

How do you feel about your life today? Are you satisfied with it? Has technology made things easier for you? Has the available technology made you a happier person? Or has it taken life away from you? With all the technology we use today humans barely have to make face to face interactions anymore. Not only is the organic presence of a person not necessary anymore to communicate, but verbal communication is not even necessary anymore.

The texting, emailing, group chats, instant messaging, and social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. have all taken away from the face to face or even verbal communication between people. You this is where it will stop?

No Buttons Needed

Communication technologies are progressively changing from buttons, to touch screens, to voice commands. Technically, we do not need buttons to communicate with each other anymore. All we need is our voices or fingers to command a piece of technology to do as we say. In the next twenty five years, communication technology will drastically change. Computers will be able to read our minds with wireless signals that will lie somewhere within our bodies. With a chip implanted in our bodies, or some sort of a wireless signal we will be able to communicate our thoughts to others through the developed electronics that will encode our messages and deliver them to others.

Technology Advancement…Faster Than you think. You Scared Yet?

According to Moore’s Law, technology doubles every 24 months. Can you keep up with it? Think about the last electronic you bought, how long did it it take for another “better” more advanced version to come out? Yeah, keeping up with technology and the electronics that are generated from all of these developments is not easy. But if the rate that technology is growing has doubled in the recent years, what is next? Will the future technologies help us or hurt us? Will our world be perfect or destructive?

 

Technology Bringing The Perfect World

To some the perfect world could be a world where one does not have to work or do anything to get what they want, with a simple command it can happen. In essence, a perfect world of effortlessness to do things. At the pace technology is developing humans will not have to do much for themselves. Humans will be able live their lives in peace and relaxation. Robots and any sort of computer generated product will cater to whatever humans needs are. Once a family or an individual is able to afford a robot, they will do everything for them. Cars will not run on gas, they will run on electricity. Cars will be Eco-friendly and will not pollute the air. Everything will be green and the environment will be clean at all times. Twenty five years from now teleportation will also have been developed. This will make it easier for people to get from place to place in just seconds anywhere in the world. People never have to be late to anything and can be present at any event at any time. Laws will be altered to the lifestyle that these technologies will bring. People will be so happy with their lives that violence and crime will be close to non existing. The government will issue a robot to assist low income citizens who cannot afford them. The world would be at peace working primary through electronics.

Not only will robots assist us in our every day lives, but information will be able to be plugged straight into our bodies. We will have all the knowledge we need for anything. Having all this knowledge will create new innovations which will generate more jobs for people. With all this knowledge not only will humans develop new ideas for the world, but they will develop a cure for AIDS and diseases around the world that were never able to be cured.

Men and woman who are lonely and have struggled with love can now fulfill their emptiness by simply purchasing a robot. One can program the robot to be the man or woman they never had and more. Since the robots will be capable of doing more than a human can physically do, satisfaction will be higher. Robot and human relationships will be normal and they will become a part of society.

Wouldn’t this utopia  be nice?

 Doomed

People either have the idea of a perfect world or a doomed world with the progress technology is making every day. Why would we be doomed if we have everything we could ever as for with all of these new innovative developments and knowledge? Well, not having to move a finger to accomplish things on a daily basis if we have all our technological robots and computer generated products do things for us means we are not moving as much anymore, essentially making the human race lazy.  The excess technology that will be brought to the world will increase the percentage of the world who is obese. People will be unhealthier and have more medical problems due to the lack of movement and increased amount of laziness.

Having robots as our caterers can be a very bad thing. One day they may all revolt against the human race when having the realization that they are capable of doing a lot more than a human can and their intelligence is much higher.

Robots could essentially take over the world, and roles could change. Humans will become the caterers of robots and chaos will break out. Wars will occur and people will die wiping out a percentage of the human race.

With all of this artificial and technological intelligence on the radar people in other countries who have issues with other countries may act upon the way they feel. The people of one country may act, and the other may want to up them which would progressively turn into a war.  Wars will break out between countries, eventually wiping out the entire human population.

Reality check?

Think again, is technology everything we need in life? Is this all we need to be happy? Or is it slowly but surely causing chaos in ways we do not realize? We may not think or notice the changes technology has brought to our lives, just remember nothing is guaranteed in life.

My World in 2035

In my mind our world in twenty five years will have extremely changed in all aspects. I think that it will be close to impossible to go even sixty seconds without seeing a single advertisement or being bombarded with media. However, I feel as if that is already happening today, so imagine twenty five more years of technology development and new innovations? Surely there will be more mediums through which information is transmitted to us which will contribute to this excess consumption of media in our lives. I also believe that advertisements will not be as personalized because the consumers will be monitored and the advertisements will have their designated targets set.

I believe that the the advanced technology will indeed create the product of robots and they will be doing most of what humans are physically supposed to be doing.

The robots will benefit some but agonize others because not everyone will be able to afford these expensive electronics with higher intelligence. These robots will also take the place of human workers, thus increasing the unemployment rates and taking jobs away from humans themselves. This would eventually lead to chaos and people losing their minds.