Research consistently shows how through the years more of our time gets spent using media, how multitasking our media has become a regular feature of everyday life, and that consuming media for most people increasingly takes place alongside producing media. Media Life is a primer on how we may think of our lives as lived in rather than with media. The book uses the way media function today as a prism to understand key issues in contemporary society, where reality is open source, identities are - like websites - always under construction, and where private life is lived in public forever more. Ultimately, media are to us as water is to fish. The question is: how can we live a good life in media like fish in water? Media Life offers a compass for the way ahead.

Do you ever obsess about your body? Do you lie awake at night, fretting about the state of your career? Does everyone else's life seem better than yours? Does it feel as if you'll never be good enough? Why Social Media is Ruining Your Life tackles head on the pressure cooker of comparison and unreachable levels of perfection that social media has created in our modern world. In this book, Katherine Ormerod meets the experts involved in curating, building and combating the most addictive digital force humankind has ever created. From global influencers - who collectively have over 10 million followers - to clinical psychologists, plastic surgeons and professors, Katherine uncovers how our relationship with social media has rewired our behavioural patterns, destroyed our confidence and shattered our attention spans. Why Social Media is Ruining Your Life is a rallying cry that will provide you with the knowledge, tactics and weaponry you need to find a more healthy way to consume social media and reclaim your happiness. Reviews for Why Social Media is Ruining Your Life: 'This book is a call to arms from the eye of the storm' - Emma Gannon, author of The Multi-Hyphen Method 'Enter Ormerod's vital manual, which will help you navigate social media and turn it not into a weapon, but a useful tool' - Pandora Sykes

An unfiltered look at the addictive properties of social media, TV, and movies on our culture, with strategies to help you reclaim control over your life. Today, the average person spends an astonishing eight hours a day watching TV or videos online. Watching social media stories, movies, and TV is now our number one activity, outpacing everything else that we do, including sleep. This habit has an incredibly powerful influence on our lives – from what we think to what we buy to whom we elect. Media are more than entertainment; they are a drug. This media addiction wreaks havoc on our mental health, causing increased stress, depression, and anxiety, and ruining personal relationships. It also drives us deeper and deeper into debt. In Don’t Watch This, former TV producer and Ivy League professor Michael Rosenblum reveals the hidden psychology driving us to media addiction. He describes why solving the problem is not as simple as swearing off our devices, but about learning how to use media for good. Rosenblum reveals the key to getting the best out of technology, without letting it get the best of you. Inside, you’ll learn: How to take control of the media How to use your phone’s camera to spread stories worth telling How having a former reality TV star in the Oval Office has changed the scope of media Why posting selfies on Instagram isn’t going to change the world, and what you can post instead Enlightening and empowering, Don’t Watch This provides actionable, revolutionary techniques and insight to control your media addiction—helping you live the life you really want.

Inspired by artist Tamara Laporte’s popular online art classes (willowing.org), Create Your Life Book presents 18 step-by-step mixed-media drawing and painting projects that encourage self-fulfillment through the creative process. Tamara’s kind, non-judgmental voice guides your way. What is holding you back? Where do you want to go? Let go of the past! Use these expressive exercises to help you recognize your personal challenges and other obstacles, then work through them. Let go of limiting beliefs, find courage, feel gratitude, heal pain, and develop self-love as you playfully create. Each themed chapter presents four to five two-part projects. First, you will explore a common issue that hampers creativity and/or positive self-worth. The second portion is a step-by-step mixed-media art project designed to help you work through that issue. Just a few of the explorations: Let go of what no longer serves you by taking stock of what’s holding you back, then create a zentangle butterfly to symbolize you flying away from those limiting things. Embrace and love your inner quirky bird by taking an inventory of your quirky traits, then create a bird that celebrates them. Heal old wounds by writing a letter to yourself as a child, then create a house to keep your inner child safe. Adding rich variety to the messages and art inspiration, some of the project outlines have been contributed by Tamara's guest teachers: Roxanne Coble, Andrea Gomoll, Alena Hennessy, Mystele Kirkeeng, Ivy Newport, and Effy Wild, each of whom are noted mixed-media artists in their own right. The final chapter presents a simple binding method for creating a keepsake book of your Life Book projects. Steeped in inspirational images and uplifting affirmations, Create Your Life Book can help you achieve both personal and creative growth.

Our use of media touches on almost all aspects of our social lives, be they friendships, parent-child relationships, emotional lives, or social stereotypes. How we understand ourselves and others is now largely dependent on how we perceive ourselves and others in media, how we interact with one another through mediated channels, and how we share, construct, and understand social issues via our mediated lives. This volume highlights cutting edge scholarship from preeminent scholars in media psychology that examines how media intersect with our social lives in three broad areas: media and the self; media and relationships; and social life in emerging media. The scholars in this volume not only provide insightful and up-to-date examinations of theorizing and research that informs our current understanding of the role of media in our social lives, but they also detail provocative and valuable roadmaps that will form that basis of future scholarship in this crucially important and rapidly evolving media landscape.