The value and impact of being a media an information literate individual to the global

community

Media and information literacy provides the backbone to understanding media

and the role of media in our society and enhances the capacity of people to enjoy their
fundamental human rights. It provide some of the essential skills necessary for critical thinking,
analysis, self-expression and creativity. Information and media enables people to show and
make informed judgments as users, as well as to become skillful creators and producers of
information and media messages in their own right. The impact of the media enables us to
understand and evaluate all the media messages we encounter on a daily basis, empowering us
to make a better choices about what we choose to read, post, watch, and listen to. It helps us
to be wiser and smarter and more discerning members of the society.
As a student we need to be a media and information literate because it can help
us to gain our knowledge and also to share it to others. Technology is evolving and changing
rapidly, it is now part of our daily lives. We can now study online that help us learn in a fastest
and easiest way especially in researching things we want to know. We can access and get
information through the internet in a fastest way and experienced an enriched personal
lifestyle. We can now communicate our loved ones all around the world unlike before that
people write letters and wait for a couple of days or a month that the receiver received the
message. Today, in just one click you already know something as you read it on social media.
Different news and information you might see and read it on, but we have to be more sensitive
and read the information if it’s fake or not. We have to be more responsible and a media
literate so that you can get a correct information and also give a true news to others. Because
of the freedom and liberty that we have, we tend to forget the right conduct and simple
etiquettes that we must observe as a person mostly in sharing our words in social media.
Sometimes we aren’t aware that something we post on social media might hurt someone’s
feelings as well as we don’t know we already abused them. As we see on the news some of the
teenagers suffer cyberbullying, they might get bullied and threatened by someone and that
causes depression that lead them to death. Even a simple post can create a conflict to others,
that’s why we have to make sure that the things we share and post on facebook, instagram,
tweeter, etc. cannot cause harm to the people that might see and read it. Responsibility is a
must when we have to share and post something. We have to put it on our mind what would
be the possible effect after you’ve done posting such a thing. As expressed in Article 19 of the
Universal Declaration of human Rights, which states that ‘ Everyone has the right to freedom of
opinion and expression; this rights include freedom to hold opinions without interference and
to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of
frontiers’(milhome.wordpress.com).
 Therefore I conclude that in posting things on social media you have to be extra
careful and be responsible. You have to be aware and know the DO’S and DON’TS. Media
literacy is a skill that has been a part of the curriculum for decades, but its importance is on all-
time high. For me, media is very important especially for us as students. It help us in so many
ways in studying especially in this Pandemic situation where students prefer to have online
learning.