Media 's Effect On Teens

The media, including movies, television, video games, and more, is an extraordinarily prevalent entity in everyday life. Media displays many distorted images of real life, yet presents it as the ideal image of life. Those who watch the media are highly susceptible to forming false beliefs about what behavior trends are acceptable. Those who are most susceptible are children who are still forming schemas and experiencing schema accommodation; unfortunately, children between the ages of 2 and 11 watch television for an average of 28 hours a week (Calvert & Huston, 1987; Huston & Wright, 1996). Children are constantly reinforced and taught to follow gender roles, stereotypically classifying boys as macho and strong and girls as gentile and emotional. The purpose of this study is to further insight into the images popular media, specifically movies tailored to be enjoyed by children, shows to its viewers, specifically children.

The great Malcom X said that “The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses”. In today’s society, mass media plays a vital role and is a significant aspect in many people's lives. Mass media consists of the internet, television, news, music, game systems, radio, and the press; mass media is used everywhere and for everything. Specifically, in teenagers lives, mass media plays a significant role. Tennagers are in their grwoing stages and at this time everything that surrounds them influences them greatly. That being said, the media has a great impact on teens in regards to teen dating violence which has affected them physically, emotionally, and sexually. Furthermore, we have found that certain aspects of media are associated with high risks teen dating violence, specifically the time spent using it and the effects of the content in which teens are exposed to.

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.

I can remember her standing in front of the mirror looking at herself. How she thought she was beautiful, I don’t know. Because the image I saw was of a person who looked like a living corpse. She had to have weighed only 100 pounds, her hair so thin, the black bags under her eyes, and her overall grayish complexion made her look as if she were a dead. As she saw me staring at her in the corner of her eye, she slammed the door in my face. That was the big sister that I knew now. She was no longer the big sister that I could go to and get advice from or have a good laugh with. No, she was too busy with her own schedule and not to mention her terrible mood swings. My older sister

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.

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.

The media can be a powerful tool to get a message across. The media have been around for a while now, and in some cases it can be a useful tool to catch up with current events. In other cases it can be a total misrepresentation of the truth when it comes to controversial topics. The media use some controversial topics in order to get more and more people watch, read, and listen to their source. An example of a controversial topic, used by the media was the connection of the MMR vaccine with autism symptoms. Many media sources claim that the vaccine triggers the symptoms of autism. One of the main people causing the scare was Andrew Wakefield, a scientist who’s flawed study caused a public scare. Many people only believed his study because it was covered extensively by the media. The constant struggle of separating the real from the fake in the media often leads to citizens making misinformed decisions.

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.

Unlike previous generations who were “introduced” to the internet, television and social media, the present generation is “born” in it. By this statement, it is implied that children today are much closer to technology and media than adults are, and so, are more likely to be affected by it. Perhaps, the highest impact on the physical, cognitive, and social-emotional development of children and adolescents is by media due to its ready availability through Smart phones, tablet PCs and other portable devices. This paper attempts to evaluate some of the influences of media on various aspects of child and adolescent development.

Mass Media has always been a big impact on society, influencing people in so many ways. It keeps people in on the latest fashion trends and what is considered “in”. The media can be considered positive and or negative depending on the group of society. With mass media being easy access at anywhere and anytime, the most influence group being effect and influence on the media are teens. They tend to believe whatever the media says and displays, causing them to behave, dress, speak, talk, and think in a different manner. Even though the media can be considered social networks and blogs, teens usually set their youth lifestyle according to what kind of music they listen to and reality shows they watch. Two articles that discuss these effects are “The Influence of Social Media On Teens’ Self-Esteem” by Shannon M. Gallagher and “Mass Media and Teenagers Today” By Valorie Delp. Both of the articles explain the effects mass media on teens however one is more credible due to the reference she had research verses the other article that seem to be stating her opinion and some study she had read. However, when it comes to academic and non academic the article should draw its reader, the structure of the journals, and tone of the articles whether it’s formal or not.

The media has played a large part in creating the social norms in which many think of. This is because there are many types of media out there, including advertisements and television. The media has this type of influence on people of all ages. The influence can be trying to sell a certain item that children and teens would want or how to act or look a certain way. For this, this is why the media has a huge influence on the attitudes and viewpoints of children and teens.

Adolescence is recognized as a period of self-discovery as young people grow from children into adults and come into their own. However, adolescence does not happen in a vacuum. During the period of growth, young people are surrounded by parents, peers, and sociocultural influences, like the media, that may impact the development of how they perceive themselves.

The connection between the teens’ media exposure and teens’ risky sexual behavior have been examined throughout the years. The results of these studies conducted to examine how the exposure to mass media affect teens’ sexual behavior contradict. Teens’ romantic and sexual interests motivate them to seek for information from the media becoming exposed to television, music videos, movies and magazines six to eight hours each day (Steinberg & Monahan, 2011, p. 562). But “… media are saturated with sexual content and imagery, which appear in 83 percent of programs popular among adolescents …” (Ward, Day & Epstein, 2006, p. 57). Pettit (2003) & Pinkleton, Austin, Chen and Cohen (2012) and Fuller and Damico (2008) findings suggest that media messages potentially affect the way teens think about sex negatively. Whereas, Ward et al. (2006) suggest the effect is not always negative, and for Steinberg et al. (2011) there is no effect of mass media in teens’ sexuality. As for the inconsistency of the results, this research establishes the need of a future study on how to diminish the teens’ enjoyment of media to pursue further the possibility of making media less entertaining but educational. Results indicate teens’ exposure to mass media may or may not influence teens’ decisions about sex.

Today, teenagers like us are rarely alone. We are under pressure to be online and available at all times, talking, messaging, liking, commenting, sharing, posting - it never ends. Never before have we been so connected, so continuously, so instantaneously, so young. There’s simply no privacy, and the social pressures that go along with that are relentless. This always-on environment is training us to value ourselves based on the number of likes we get and the types of comments that we receive. There’s no separation between online and offline life. What’s real or what isn’t is really hard to tell the difference between.

Discuss the ways in which gender identities are constructed and expressed through media and popular cultures?