Popular culture in today’s society is capable of reaching out to more people than ever before at ease. Growing up, popular culture affected us even if we may not have realized it happening. Everything from who your favorite sports team is, to your favorite television when you were younger, directly relates to pop culture. Although most people do not realize this phenomenon taking place it is not surprise that mass media has a firm grip on what they want children to believe and think when they are going through one of the most important stages of their lives. The messages that they convey are the thoughts that children reproduce, and the personas that they build of themselves are all relative to how popular culture has effected them. Like most …show more content…
Before school I would watch Television, and after school it would be video games which led into the night where I would wind down by watching even more television. This, obviously, was not the healthiest of lifestyles, but balancing this between athletics I was able to even the situation out. In regards to Television, most of my influence came from watching my two favorite shows growing up which are Sportscenter and SpongeBob. I would watch SpongeBob every morning before school and I would always be sure to wind down my day by watching Sportscenter. Although being drastically different, these two shows definitely helped to sculpt the person that I am today. SpongeBob, even though it may not seem like it could possibly offer anything useful to a child growing up, helped me become who I am today. The show offers many useful lessons with relationships. Each separate episode has a driving force behind it to help guide the show that is most normally relative to relationships or lessons on how or how not to treat other people. In a Blog on the WashingtonPost written by Jennifer LaRue Huget, she goes into detail on the effect that SpongeBob has on a child’s developing …show more content…
I was never too concerned or caught up in what was going on with the news and I also did not have a phone or any sort of mobile device until the 8th grade so I was never caught up with that. The shows that I watched played a significant role in defining how I was and the things that I was interested in. For me, Mass Media did not have a negative effect on me growing up. Times are changing though, even from when I was a kid. Mass Media is evolving and taking more shapes than were relevant with children growing up in my generation. Kids currently growing up are growing up in a technologically based society in every aspect. Technology has evolved and has become so advanced and it is the perfect place for popular culture to plant its roots into. I believe that kids growing up currently are seeing a negative side of Popular Culture. They are growing up and learning to be dependent on their phones and on pop culture for what is right and wrong instead of going out and finding things out themselves. They are taught to know that the answer to any of their questions is only a Google search away. The dependence on technology that people in this day and age have is a scary phenomenon. In an article by The New York Times Magazine, they commented about the technological dependence and its downsides, “Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters. But
Pop culture, what does this term even mean? It seems to be a word that contains subjects of media, social structure, and society as a whole. According to the dictionary, pop culture is defined as “cultural activities or commercial products reflecting, suited to, or aimed at the tastes of the general masses of people”. In the society we live in today, we are constantly surrounded by pop culture, either that is with television, magazines, different sources of social media and/or exposure to others. Due to pop culture being such a dominant contribution into our world today, it has effected many parts of society. The domination of social media has created idealistic views that are stressed upon female adolescents in particular. Upon media’s influence, traditional tactics and work have been modified in order to keep up with our technology oriented society. This alters the schools and education systems. Through the use of television, social media and other means of pop culture, serious study is necessary due to the negative effects it has on the younger generation and the effects it has for their futures.
In the first chapter of The Rhetorical Power of Pop Culture by Deanna Sellnow, the author defines popular culture and explains the importance of studying the subject. Sellnow begins with a short explanation of ethics to convey that the influence popular culture has is not always used ethically. Secondly, Sellnow compares the different contexts of culture, elitist and diversity, to explain what popular culture is not. Popular culture is compiled of everyday things that influence people through subtle messages such as what is appropriate and inappropriate, good and bad, and so on.
In the chapter “What is Popular Culture and Why Study It?” from the novel The Rhetorical Power of Popular Culture, author Deanna Sellnow deliberates on the influential supremacy of popular culture in our current society. Sellnow wrote this passage to inform those affected by pop culture on a daily basis. Everyday individuals in first world countries are somehow impacted by pop culture. Pop culture’s influential power can often times mold our outlook on the world around us. It is important to realize when pop culture is trying to reevaluate your ethical beliefs so you can have a say in whether or not you want your morals to be altered.
It is no secret that the current generation is obsessed with media. You cannot walk anywhere without seeing teenagers, adults, and even kids using technology and social media. Everywhere you look there are ads to purchase the latest and greatest clothing, technology, or beauty products. Television standards have been lowered by the FCC and shows with explicit content have now taken over television leaving teenagers to idolize a lifestyle that is not to their best interest. But how does this media really affect us? What age is most drawn in and how does it change the outlook of their future? This would fall under evaluation research, I am seeking to find out the impact that media has on the current generation.
When one thinks of media, one tends to relate media to television, news, magazines, newspaper articles, and so on. Many people do not think of media is something that portrays negative effects on young women. However, young women are more susceptible to lower self-esteem resulting in eating disorders or depression more today than ever before. The media projects negative and undermining images of women and one does not have to look very hard to realize this. The media projects images of unrealistic women who only look the way they do because of plastic surgery or airbrushing techniques. The media has much greater effects on young girls than anything else in our culture today. Our society has created an environment so obsessed with
The mass media consists of any means of communication that has the ability to reach a large amount of people. The term ‘media’ can refer to movies, television, the newspaper, etc. It is because of it’s ability to out reach to a mass quantity of people that it is able to “reinforce and teach societal values.” At a young age, socialization occurs in that it involves the “learning of the values and the norms of society” and adopting them into their own personal values (Perse, 2001.) Children often have little life experience so they learn and imitate their environment whether that be the characters on television or societal institutions like their families or teachers at school. Adolescents are more susceptible to socialization in that they are at a period in which they are trying to find
The idea of pop culture has many different opinions surrounding it. Some people believe that it’s a God sent to us, others think it's the devil. Chris Hedges and Melissa Ames both have opposing opinions on this topic. Hedges, in “American Psychosis,” discusses that pop culture is bad because we focus too much on superficial topics and not enough on the real problems in our world. Whereas, Ames, in “Engaging ‘Apolitical’ Adolescents: Analyzing the Popularity and Educational Potential of Dystopian Literature Post-9/11,” suggests that pop culture is a unique tool that you can use to understand politics and our world’s problems. Both authors struggle to convince their peers to believe their ideology and they both have unique ways of doing so. By
The evolution of mass media has affected our social institutions: family, religion, morality and education, on an unprecedented scale. For most of us in the American culture, the new forms of mass media are entwined with both of our personal and professional lifestyles. Understanding how the development of these forms of mass media has been and continues to influence our American culture is vital. It will help us appreciate the role media plays in our life and will also help us to be more informed as citizens, consumers, and employees. Barnett, 2004 noted that “The Internet is the decisive technology of the Information Age, and with the explosion of wireless communication in the early
Pop Culture has a great impact on our society of today. The main problem with pop culture is that some people think that it can dumb us down, and also that it promotes violence in today’s youth. It could actually do the exact opposite. Pop Culture is just another thing to learn about in life. It could actually help us think more complex to figure out what is going to happen in the next episode in your favorite TV show. It could even have the youth reading at an early age just to figure out what is happening in the magazines, and to be able to text their friends. Also it could help us learn more about the issues in today’s world through the use of browsing the internet. The main issues that will be covered through this paper are: how modern TV can enlighten the audience, the use of social media in political movements, and the effects on how pop culture can educate the youth 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.
Popular culture has an undeniable influence on how society perceives itself. When examining mass culture, one must keep in mind the equilibrium between how much we, as a society, affect the way popular culture is constructed and to what extent popular culture influences the way we view ourselves and shapes our ideologies. An aspect of popular culture that may serve to greatly exemplify this theory of society as both the affecter and the affected is the genre of magazines targeted at young women. Though these publications are targeted as the representation of our society’s adolescent females, they actually have a great influence over the ways in which teens view and construct
Back in the 1920s people had receive news and entertainment through the radio, which then in turn out-shined newspapers and magazines. Now day’s social media sites have become the most popular form to get the news and information. The biggest tool in the media that generates revenue by the millions every day, is advertising. The media has its way of showing us constructive information when it comes to news channels, travel and other educational shows. Kids benefit from watching these, since it can boost self-esteem, heighten interest levels in a particular subject, or encourage them to ask relevant questions.
What pops into your mind first when you think of popular culture in today’s day and age? The latest dirt on celebrities or the latest iPhone release? The latest controversial issue or the latest iTunes hit? Regardless, pop culture encompasses all four of these concepts and many more, which consume the world we live in each and every day. Think about education. At first thought, your mind may not make the connection between the newest Taylor Swift song and the highest ACT score, but the linkage between the two becomes undeniable when you dive deeper. Ponder this: each day millions of kids walk into school buildings across the United States, each of them glued to a little slice of pop culture, a.k.a. their phone. And each day these millions
Turn on the television, computer, smartphone, or tablet and the majority of the time an advertisement depicting youthful faces will appear within 10 minutes if not the first 5 seconds of a loading youtube video. Beauty products, weight loss programs and suppliments, plastic surgery references and encouragement, tickets to events or locations which stimulate feelings of nostalgia bombard viewers from every angle. This bias of youthful appearances is the basis of American media. “The mass media is in the business of affecting how and what people think” (Summers). By Summers definition it can be concluded that, as the majority of people build the culture of a society and media affects how and what people think, mass media is creating a culture obsessed with youth. Americans have a fascination with youth and are reluctant to accept aging gracefully.
One of the major ways society plays a role in teenagers lives is through media.