The Effects Of Media On Children 's Mental And Physical Health

Today nearly 98% of American households have televisions. This makes television the single most important source of media in the lives of children and adolescents. Research shows that about 21- 23 hours per week on average, that children between the ages of five and twelve are exposed. This brings much controversy as to how television delivers the news, media, and violence to young children and adolescents. Many argue that the viewing of television during these crucial years of development can be very harmful involving the link of violence with aggressive behavior, hindering emotional and social development, the lack of exercise, health and activities, the development of temperament in young children, and sleep deprivation.

As mass media continues to expand through our use of everyday electronics, children 's socialization skills may be suffering by the lack of face to face, physical, and natural interaction. Mass media like television, computers, radios, newspapers, video games and many others play a huge role in socialization in children. Children need interaction, and mass media offers no physical interaction at all. Children are spending more and more time in the house on their tablets, watching TV, and surfing the internet. It is cutting into their time with friends and family, as well as time getting physical exercise. It is also affecting their cognitive thinking and abilities to socialize with others.

Many individuals will experience mental health problems in the course of a year. Individuals with mental health problems experience discrimination. This discrimination brought on mainly through what is being shown in the media. The belief that most mentally ill are violent comes from the media. However, some of the crimes that are committed by mentally ill individuals can be dramatic. According to Alexander (2009), “Studies have shown that exposure to even just one single shocking media image of violent mental illness seemed to increase the expectation that those labeled as mentally ill are particularly likely to do physical harm to others and to make the media consumer more fearful of such individuals” (p.32). Sometimes the public do not know

Progressions happened between the 1980s and 1990s in the field of computer technology. With this increase, more computer access would be able to children in school and home. With an easier access to media for children increased the media influence. During this same progression period, media went under a huge transformation. This transformation resulted in the increase of sexual innuendo and themes and violent behavior. This revolution of media was apparent in movies, music lyrics, video games, cartoons, magazines and television. Renee Hobbs Author of “Media Literacy in the Classroom." Stated

My hypothesis was that if adolescents are largely exposed to media; they will be affected it to a point where they learn and accept certain things about sex through it. Independent variables would be the extent to which adolescents are exposed to the media. The dependent variables were the ways in which adolescents were affected by the media. I used resources such as Gale and SIRS to look up articles related to my topic. Eventually, I went out and used the information from my articles to help create questions for my questionnaire and interview. To research my population I used these two methods of research: a questionnaire and interview. I conducted my research in Cocalico High School. I asked my SAT prep class, civics and government class,

“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”("Malcolm X Quote").Malcolm X explains how the media has become a source of control and fountain of manipulation to the mind. Like Malcolm X, many researchers believe that the media has a heavy influence on an individual's state of mental health and that the representation of media encourages negativity and violence. Media negatively affects an individual's mental health by encouraging violence, destroying self-esteem, and creating high anxiety when it comes to face-to-face communication.

There is a very important social issue that must be addressed to save our future generations from decline. The social issue I will be analyzing is how violence in media affects children. “Thus brutality itself becomes at once the means to success and the content of success –a success that is defined in its most general terms, not as accomplishment or specific gain, but simply as the unlimited possibility of aggression” (Warshow 433). Doing evil deeds to reach a certain level of success is how a gangster reaches success and this perception of “bad” being “good” clouds children’s judgement to do the right thing. Children are wrongly influenced by many mediums including drug abuse in movies, anger management and video game violence. Violence in media affects children in a negative way by influencing them to use drugs, become bullies and mature into abusive adults because it gives people a false sense of reality towards violent behavior.

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 world that we lived in is all surrounding with media, people use the media every day and everything; such as watching television, using the computer, and talking on the phone. On the media we could learn and find out the information that we need. And we can also share our personal information on the media. Media gives us a lot of convenient in our life, but there are also some negative impacts. Media has a lot of negative impacts which it could be affected on children and adolescents.

With the growth in popularity in films, media has been a major influence in people’s lives. In recent years we see movies and tv shows impacting the way we talk, move, and even think. In recent events, theories on violent behavior have emerged with the belief that media is causing it. The issue becomes even more serious when“...watching violence in the media becomes enjoyable and does not result in the anxious arousal that would be expected from seeing such imagery.” ("Violence in the Media."). A lack of anxiety leads to apathy in people when it comes to doing violent crimes themselves. People become so used to watching violence and crime that it becomes apart of their lives and could influence them into behaving the same way as a character in a movie or tv show that they watch. This is especially true for children because they are watching these types of shows and movies while their minds are still developing. Violence in media is a serious issue because as media influence grows, the bigger the chance that crime rates will go up do to the impact it has on children in such an early stage of their life, and parents of these children need to get involved to stop the promotion of violent behavior.

As far back as at least the 50s, there have been people outraged by violence in the media. Whether in video games, books, radio, music, or television, there is always someone or something to blame for the violence. Violence is everywhere in the media , there is no disagreeing with that. Whether it be movies, television, video games, or music, there will always be violence, but blaming it on movies, television, video games, or music is not the answer. If blame needs to be placed why are the parent of the children who choose to commit acts of violence not being blamed. It never seems to be the fault of the person who caused the violence, but rather, people look for a scapegoat to blame. Some would say the effects of media can be

December 14, 2012- 20-year old Adam Lanza fatally shoots 20 children and 6 adult staff members of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, later shooting himself, making this incident the deadliest mass shooting at a high school or grade school in U.S. history. It may seem ridiculous to think that this was derived from video games. The Daily News reported that Lanza had many video games in his house promoting mass murder, school shootings, and gun violence, which police believed helped to inspire Lanza’s, “sick, game-style high score”. The release of this evidence contributed to a continuing debate on the extent of the effects of media on children and young people. Many children are exposed to media continually, even though young ages are times of fragile development and strong receptibility. The Center of Media and Human Development records that youth from as little as two months to eight years of age spend an average of five hours watching television or online videos, and 69 percent of families with young children under eight years old have a smartphone, with 38 percent of children under two used a mobile device for media, states . This raises the question, does media desensitize and negatively affect adolescents? Desensitization is defined as the diminished emotional responsiveness to a negative, or aversive stimulus after repeated exposure to it. Media lessens emotional responsiveness and harms adolescents because of suggestive themes, graphically violent

In today’s society, there are a number of factors that affect a child’s ability to learn. The media, for good and for bad, is the primary teacher of American youth. This environment reflects life itself, sometimes in a corrupt way, including the positive and heinous parts, along with the beautiful and hideous parts, as well as the charitable and violent parts. It is almost impossible to protect American youth from experiences reflecting the adult world when the media invades homes and becomes so much a part of everyday living. “American teenagers spend 31 hours a week watching television, 10 hours a week online, 4 hours a week reading magazines, and 17 hours a week listening to music” (Miss). Even though mass media is a huge part of a

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, I am Ben Roberts, here to speak to you about the impact of media on children today at the United Nations Youth Forum. Media has been unfairly portraying kids in a stereotypical manner for a while now, with kids being shown to be juvenile delinquents, class nerds and jocks and yet always failing to describe the difficulties of growing up or just being a kid. Often in media it is exclusively adults, adults and more adults. This is what Gigli believes to be true, as was written in her text from 2004 that analysed the media consumption and the messages for children. However, there are many examples of not-overly-flawed, but realistic and human portrayals of kids and teenagers – you just need to know where to look for them. One example is from young-adult fiction author John Larkin 's book The Pause, whose main character is Declan O 'Malley. While he does make many mistakes throughout the duration of the book, such as attempt suicide due to depression, he is rarely shown as a nuisance to adults and is portrayed as being a good class member, as he wants to become an English teacher. Because of this, Gigli 's text from 2004 is not quite as relevant today as it was in 2004. The book The Pause that was published in 2015 reflects many different social issues, causing Gigli 's text to have a diminished meaning which somewhat invalidates her claim that children require more realistic portrayals

Mass media creates unrealistic, unhealthy portrayals of female sexuality, sexual health, and shows unnecessary female sexuality and nudity on an immense level. The average woman is misrepresented in the media; this is unhealthy for many women and girls. Studies show viewing sexually objectifying material contributes to eating disorders, low self-esteem, depression and body dissatisfaction. In a 1992 study of female students at Stanford University, 70% of women reported feeling worse about themselves and their bodies after looking at magazines. Lack of identity is a major concern for adolescents and the media is constantly telling them who or what to act and look like. While it is up to an