Effects of Media on Women and Children

Media has become a significant component within society. While media provides many pros, it supplies various cons as well. One very prominent fault that the significance of media has is its visual depiction of women. There is an abundance of media portraying women to have ideal bodies, and this undoubtedly has a negative effect on adolescent girls. Two of the many effects of media on females are depression and self esteem issues, as well as eating disorders. Unfortunately, body dissatisfaction caused by media is becoming more and more common.

Teenage girls are at an impressionable time in their lives. Mass Media is a key idea in one of the factors of socialization that become important to teenagers. Teenagers look to the media for a sense of entertainment. Whether it is movies, magazines, or even some aspects of social media, teenagers get a lot of influence from the media’s message. The problem with this is the media has a specific way of doing things and can be negative to a susceptible teenage girl. Media’s way of portraying a woman can be skewed and unrealistic way from what reality is. Teenage girls then have a desire for this look or way. In this essay the three ways I will describe as to why the media can negatively affect a teenage girls body image is by showing

Within our society today, media plays a huge role in everyone’s life - an important role. Media offers entertainment, news, information, and education; however, with these benefits come negatives as well. For example, foul language, drug abuse, and sexual content may be presented to an unsuitable audience, specifically children. It’s easy to see sexual content on tv, hear foul language in songs on the radio, or even hear about the abuse of drugs and alcohol. Children are especially good at mimicking what they see and are easily influenced. So, with all this content being shown openly with no censorship, children think this is a social norm, as well as spending long periods of time watching TV, playing video games, and using the internet. Modern technology has transformed the way children learn and interact within their environment, it is having a negative effect on them in this younger generation with all the easy access to all genera’s of media material for long periods of time.

“We tend not to write women as human beings. It’s cartoons we’re making.” - Paul Haggis. This is a quote that was explored in Miss Representation that especially impacts me. The impact of media on women and men is immense. Media shapes the way the genders view each other and themselves and therefore has the power to dictate how humans act, how they feel, and tell them what they want. I feel that with the constant, unregulated bombardment of media demonstrating the unrealistic and unfair treatment of the women, it’s not crazy to think that young women are harming themselves to fit these roles. The media being uncensored leads to harmful consequences including women being discouraged from positions of power and changing their body.

On any given day, 70% of Australian children listen to approximately an hour of radio programs. The media promotes, if not establishes, a standard of beauty that leads many females to feel badly about their weight and shape. (Rutherford, L. , Bittman, R. et al, 2005.). In Australia the highest amount of sexual content legally available to children in music and music videos. “44%-81% of music videos contain sexual imagery”, especially the presentation of women in provocative and revealing clothing, emphasising their bodies and “sexual readiness”, and using women as “decorative objects that dance and pose” (APA, 2010)

When I was first given this assignment it made me a bit uneasy. I was nervous about writing an extended essay on one particular topic. Being that there are so many social issues that need to be brought to light I was having a little trouble sticking to just one. However, with some guidance and encouragement I decided to finally settle with the issue of sex in the media. Within this extended essay I will attempt to shine light on the history of sex in advertisement and examples of different ads, prove sex sells any and everything, the role the media plays in our youth’s lives and creates hyperactive sexual development in children between thirteen and seventeen years old and how the media degrade women and associate them as mere objects. I

The sexualization of young girls and women in society is a prevalent theme in mass media. Presently, the sexualization of females is commonly seen in various consumer items like clothes, dolls, and even in Disney movies, according to “The Sexualization of Girls Is Harmful” article. The author says that sexualization occurs when “a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior; a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness with being sexy; a person is sexually objectified- made into a thing for others’ sexual use; and sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person (AboutKidsHealth).” Furthermore, the author provides statistics on how girls are being sexualized by the products they see and use

Parents can also get involved by monitoring their children’s media, placing media devices in common areas, and using media with their children (Greenfield, 747). This in itself can effectively mitigate the effects of media sexualization. Overall, parent child communication as well as parental monitoring of media, are only a small part of the solution. Children must learn more about media sexualization from sources other than their parents in order to get a deeper understanding about the issue. This leads to schools and education systems being the next part of the

In modern day America, the average person spends a good portion of their day on social media or watching television. Furthermore, the new era of adolescents is even more exposed than the average person. This exposure can be very good and have many positive influences on a kid’s life; open new doors to meeting new people and having easy access to personal wants and needs. Unfortunately, this media can very well be a tool used to manipulate the tender minds of adolescents and open doors to self-hatred along with depression. Young girls seem to generally have it worse than boys due to the social norms and societal pressures. The media can set unrealistic or inappropriate images of what

After examining multiple sources, the damaging effects on women that is influenced through media involves many different aspects as it includes body dissatisfaction and body shaming, mental disorders including eating disorders, depression, and low self-esteem, and impacts on sexuality based on how women are portrayed in media. It can be concluded that they hypothesis was correct in the sense that the media is influencing the sexualization of girls and causing these negative effects to occur.

(Heubeck 2006) For many young people, especially girls, the ideal continues to chase them as they grow into young women. Young girls begin to internalize the stereotypes and judge themselves by media’s impossible standards. The power that the media holds in impacting the lives of young girls is detrimental and eventually affects their body image, their satisfaction of their own body, and portrayal of their body as an object.

What starts out as accidental exposure to sexual media can become a full-blown addiction (Kistler & Lee, 2010; Ouytsel, Ponnet, & Walrave, 2014). Early use of pornography is correlated with higher compulsivity as an emerging adult (Giordano, & Cashwell, 2017; Stinson, 2010; Willoughby, Carroll, Nelson, & Padilla-Walker, 2014; Willoughby, Young-Petersen, & Leonhardt, 2018; Ybarra & Mitchell, 2005). Virtually every individual who lives in modern society will be exposed to sexual media; even those who say they abstain still have a 20% likelihood of seeing pornography and sexual media incidentally (Willoughby, et al.,

are sexual object an they should behave same au the media present it (Collins, R 2011,). Understanding how the media provide

As you’re walking down a street you may notice a young group of girls or women walking and they see a huge billboard of a beautiful model. They might stop and stare at her and then discuss about her perfect her body is. Not knowing in the next five minutes they’ll be comparing their bodies to the model and feeling bad about themselves wishing that they had her body. Not to mention, that the photo may be photoshopped to make it seem as her body is perfect, or she had plastic surgery to fit the idea of having the perfect body. The fact that the media thinks they’re encouraging young girls and women to embrace their beauty, they’re influencing them that they have to have a perfect body in order to get attention. The media has put a lot of pressure on young girls and women to look perfect and second guess their bodies, when plastic surgery is never the answer to build their self-esteem up.

Our sex saturated media is also generating conflict in young girls’ development. The portrayal of women as sexual objects is discussed in the article “The sexualization of Girls is Harmful” by Olivia Ferguson and Hayley Mitchell Haugen. The article cites statistics of “prime-time television shows popular among children” remarking that “12% of sexual comments involved sexual objectification toward women” and “23% of sexual behaviors involved leering, ogling or catcalling at female characters”.(par 6) The feature provides www.aboutkidshealth.ca/ as an “online resource for information about areas of children’s health and family life”. (Par 1) This web site states “depression, low self-esteem and eating disorders” as consequences for media sexualizing women. (Par 2) The research defines “the objectification theory as a psychological theory explaining the