Media Impact On Teenagers

As a wise man once said, “To love yourself is to understand you don't need to be perfect to be good.” However young girls have so much pressure put on them to look in a way that is not only unrealistic but also unhealthy. As a result of this, young girls have a very negative body image and self-confidence.The problem is the unrealistic body standards that media and society have set for girls. According to SSCC, the average American woman is 5’4 and 140 pounds. There is a clear problem when the media is only advertising women that are 5’11 and 117 pounds, which is the average American model. Even though the body of a model is very rare and uncommon,girls are expected to look like they do. However, by promoting a positive body campaign, stopping the portrayal of fake and photoshopped models in the media, and expanding the diversity of models, we could lift unrealistic body standards and start accepting everybody as beautiful.

Furthermore, media surrounds teenage girls in today’s culture. It is impossible to escape the sight of media. The media’s constant idealistic beauty is ever present to a vast amount of self-conscious girls. This image of beauty causes girls to have low self-esteem (Clay, Vignoles, and Dittmar). Media defining this perfect body image causes many adolescent girls to feel dissatisfied with their bodies and become depressed. “Viewing ultra-thin or average-size models led to decreases in both body satisfaction and self-esteem in adolescent girls aged eleven to sixteen, with changes in self-esteem fully mediated by changes in body satisfaction” (Clay, Vignoles, and Dittmar).

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

The media plays a major role in the way our society sets certain standards and forms opinions. No matter where we go, the media is everywhere. The message that the media illustrates today is that “thin is in”. When was the last time you flipped through a magazine or through the television channels without seeing some type of advertisement promoting a new diet or new product being promoted by a super thin model or actress? Young girls are the main targets for new products. It is common for young girls to be obsessed with what is “in”. The message that young girls are getting from the media is that having bones sticking out is the way to look. They then become preoccupied with their bodies and self image. “ The exposure to ideal images coincides with a period in their lives where self regard and self efficacy is in decline, where body image is at its most fragile due to physical changes of puberty and where tendency for social comparison is at its peak” (www.eating-disorders.org.uk/docs/media.doc). The media illustrates to young girls an “idealized” shape which leads to being beautiful, popular, successful, and loved but which is not realistic to have unless you have the “idealized” shape. Therefore, they believe that their lives will be perfect as long as they are thin and have the “idealized” shape. The two main sources of media that reach young girls are television and magazines.

Beauty standards in America are always changing and continuously on the rise due to society’s constant obsession with the perfect body image. This image is built upon the things we see in movies, television shows, and magazines, which causes girls to feel the need to look flawless and set far-fetched goals for their physical appearance. Today’s era marks tall, skinny and flawless faces as beautiful, and if girls don’t have any of these attributes, they truly believe that they aren’t as beautiful and will do whatever it takes in order to obtain that beauty. In today’s ever-so-demanding society, social media, flawless models, and pressure from not only peers but from family as well, have all implemented a negative impact

Body image has become a topic of conversation, with girls as young as five years old. Their conversations consist of their freckled complexion, the color of their hair, and even worse, their weight compared to others. The fact that at such a young age they are already finding concern and dissatisfaction with looks, can be alarming. With images of unattainably thin and flawless bodies scattered all over the media, there is no wonder that our younger generation is questioning their beauty and image. These images appear all around; on bill boards, in magazines, on television

Researchers have discovered that “ongoing exposure to certain ideas can shape and distort our perceptions on reality.” (Mintz 2007) Because young girls are subjected to a constant display of beautiful people in the media, they have developed a negative body image of themselves. Those who have a negative body image perceive their body as being unattractive or even hideous compared to others, while those with a positive body image will see themselves as attractive, or will at least accept themselves and be comfortable in their own skin. During adolescence, negative body image is especially harmful because of the quick changes both physically and mentally occurring during puberty. Also, young girls are becoming more and more exposed to the media and the media keeps getting more and more provocative. Young girls are looking to women with unrealistic body shapes as role models. It’s hard to find, in today’s media, a “normal” looking

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.

The influence of the media on all aspect of society has spread like wildfire especially in the United States. One specific influence by the media is body image, large number of young women and girls look up to people in the media and are influenced by the way they look. Now days you’re appraised on your attractiveness, the way you look, the way you dress, and especially how thin you are. The media’s representation of body image has contributed to the social trend of an unhealthy lifestyle. Women and young girls today are fixated on trying modify the way they look to achieve the perfect body image set by the standards of society. Female’s worry about the way they look starting at young ages from the unhealthy image of the Barbie doll to the

The importance of the body image and what is considered to be the ‘ideal’ body are two of the primary factors that contribute to the negative affect of the media on the teenage society of today.

Adolescence is a time where an individual’s sense of identity starts to emerge and a majority of their social norms are perceived. In this day and age, adolescents live in a world heavily submerged around media, which plays an important and habitual part of an adolescents' life. In a national survey conducted in 2009, adolescents on average spend more than 7.5 hours using some sort of media a day (Rideout, Foehr, Roberts, 2010). With this unprecedented access to the world, individuals are learning and connecting with many different people and ideas through the media (Brown & Bobkowsi, 2011). With different forms of media playing an influential part in an adolescents’ life, their perceived social norms may be seriously influenced.

Over the years a debate over who is to blame over the decline in how girls perceive themselves has arisen. With Photoshop being the societal norm concerning the media, it has become difficult for many to understand where the line between real and near impossible standards lies. Youths see an image edited to “perfection” and strive to reach the standards that they imagine due to the images displayed on magazines, television and social media. From Disney to magazines like Vogue the mass media bombards audiences with fake beauty that they, as normal people, will never be able to achieve. The mass media is responsible for causing the rise in the number of people with a poor body image, eating disorders, and cosmetic surgeries.

Magazines, television, and movies all portray the lives of teens as being perfect, cool, or some sort of unrealistic living situation. The media causes young females and males alike to think that they have to dress a certain way to be cool, or act a certain way to be viewed the way they want to be by

The media is a huge part in everyone's lives and they have a great influence on the actions we partake in on a daily basis. Though adults don't usualy fall into the pressure of the media, young children and teenagers ae highly sussestable to what the media is telling them to do and what's 'cool'. A major action glorified by the media is smoking and it pressures minors to take up the horrible habit as an attempt to be happy or some how be like their favorite celebrity. Media and holly wood especially have both contributed to an era of people smoking and are a direct cause for the increase of youth smoking today.

The unrealistic standards of beauty is hurting this generation of what the media and society thinks a girl has to look like, for many years the media has been trying to construct the ideal image of what a “perfect woman” should look like. They believe there only beautiful if they have long legs, great hair, and curves in the right places (HuffingtonPost2017). Which is not the influence that we want to carry down to future generations of girls who feel like they must live up to the expectations of girls who have the “perfect body”. With media apps being popular in the 21st century, there was a survey done on some of the top media apps, their study #statusofmind surveyed almost 1,500 young people aged 14 to 24 on how certain media apps impact health ( CableNewsNetwork 2017). Body images statistics say 80% of woman say images,