My very first impression of television was me sitting silently in front of the TV, surprisingly, for an interview while I was still a child. It was the moment that I found out we could hear stories out of a machine instead of listening to those bed stories out of a book. Looking back at my own experience, I can't help but exclaim how greatly the ever-evolving media has influenced my life.

Exactly like the way how my first encounter with television changed my perspective of hearing stories. The new media today enlightens us with many possibilities. The possibility of getting to know other individuals more easily, even those distant well-known public figures; the possibility of being a part of a surveillance system of higher authority which was once regarded as superior and inviolable; more importantly, the possibility to acquire information about other countries more efficiently and accurately. Those are things that we would never have imagined before. The media somehow has made the world a smaller and flatter place where everyone is so easily jointed.

With a mobile phone and internet coverage, we could read about the most up-to-date events in India. The unprecedentedly fast and intimate connection among people makes us obsessed with the new way of exchanging ideas, thus accelerating the growth of media.

However, as far as I'm concerned, the media could not truly prosper if we don't adjust our attitude towards it. Ever since the "Watergate Scandal", media has been regarded as a highly praised disinterested supervisor by revealing the dark secret of a president. It's also through another jaw-dropping event known as "Hacking scandal" that we should seriously begin to reassess the current situation of media, and its future path as well.

Facing the fact that our demand for transparency and authentic information increases tremendously, the media seems to have no choice but to take the risk to hack people's private life so as to obtain the so called exclusive reports. To a certain degree, our over-attachment to media and the glut of information, no matter authentic or not, result in a chaotic situation where we have to trust the media. It is quite understandable that in the contemporary society where almost every single person could set up his own news station, it is very hard to scrutinize every piece of information. While, I believe the initial intention to develop media is to respond to an increasingly frequent communication between individuals, as well as organizations. Thus, how to use and regulate the media appears to be a vital question in defining the future of it.

As an indispensable part in both domestic and international communication, the future media is the key, though subtle, in building up a nation's image, and uniting the citizens. We have to understand the main purpose of media to embrace what it brings us, and we have to always deal with them with sufficient objectivity and rational judgment.

(By Han Youjia Editor: Cui Xuyan)