The Effects of Online Media on Adolescents

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.

What defines someone as 'dumb? ' How can someone define someone as either stupid or illiterate? Our generation has the ability to access knowledge and the ability to part-take in educational seminars and activities. How can one become stupid if it is the normal lifestyle of either a teenager or 30 year old to constantly learn and practice? Other say the drive of knowledge is lost from the youth, even though the access of learning is possible most of them do not wish to learn anything. The generation of youth can learn and continues to learn everyday, not in need of passion to learn general knowledge. The focus on how the youth’s knowledge does not meet the level needed to succeed is distorted.

Today, there are several social networking sites, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest. With all these easily accessible via laptop or smartphone, many kids and teenagers have created accounts that they frequently use. In fact, social media is how most people pass the time now. With these sites also come many potential threats, posing the question, should minors be allowed to create personal web pages? Although there are some positives to children and teenagers having social media accounts, there is too much danger involved to allow minors to create personal web pages.

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,

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 Internet is an immense database that provides users with a tremendous amount of information on research, commerce, and entertainment. Unfortunately, as the internet keeps advancing, online predators continue to become more successful in what they do. The internet is an ideal network for pedophiles to pursue their interests and fixations with young children. It enables them to locate and interact with adolescents more rapidly than ever before. Although the idea of pedophiles luring children in on the internet is a horrifying image, it is happening. It is through the internet’s easy accessibility that children continue to become vulnerable to these internet predators while engaging in social networking sites.

The internet does offer negative contributions such associal media attracting online predators, this has the potential to lead to many undesirable effects on children.Younger people’s profiles on social media have the potential to attract aggressive online predators who tactically use personal information from social media profiles to choose their targets who they then abduct and sexually exploit, before this however they are the offenders use instant messaging or email to contact the target and form a relationship with them posing as themselves, research indicates only 5% of offenders pretend to be teenagers (Wolak, 2008).

Depictions of sexual behavior and erotic material are observed in the media on a regular basis; often in movies, video games, television shows, music and many other sources of mass media. Aside from those depictions occurring in the media, sexualized intimate behaviors take place in the public sphere every day as well. Sexual media content is frequently held accountable for minors’ early engagement in sexual activities. While there are large amounts of research on the influence of media on adolescents, there is a deficiency of investigation of media impact on adults, in addition to the insufficient amount of research on people’s attitudes toward public display of affection (PDA). With the shortage of observation in these areas, the proposed study is designed to explore both topics, while simultaneously attempting to determine if a relationship exists between them.

According to a study from the Pew Research Center, 92% of American teens go online to post, like, comment, tweet, and re-tweet at least a hundred photos a day. Preadolescents between the ages of 9-15 primarily use social media websites as a portal to communicate with past friends, find new ones, and to post about their day. However, the use of these sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube etc. can put young kids at risk of being bullied online, stalked by predators and pedophiles, and subjected to inappropriate pictures and videos. The truth is today youths lack the basic understanding of the dangers that lurk within social media, and therefore should not be allowed to use them until they can fully comprehend all the risks attached to using these sites.

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

More and more people are using the internet for various reasons, but the most prevalent reason is for social media, which is used as a kind of entertainment. One of the main groups of people that use social media is young adults. And even though they use it to connect with other people and have fun, they are getting adverse effects from it. Jiang reports that “20% of teens say their peers are unkind to each other on social media,” “24% of young adults say someone has written about them, which takes away their privacy,” “[a]nd 9% of young adults say someone has used the internet to threaten them on social media” (Jiang).

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.

The average teenager has witnessed a game of beer pong at least once during their high school career. As the years go by, the use of social media has began to increase. Not only is social media becoming part of our everyday way of life, but also it is beginning to ruin our society. In today's world, the average teenager now uses various social media sites to keep friends updated with their daily routine. Unfortunately, this can include using social media to post inappropriate content.

Children and teens now live in a world that is covered with media influences. In the Australian Nursing Journal article it states, “Media sites provide young people with opportunities to stay connected with friends, family and the world, and develop technical, creative and social skills” (2012, Australian Nursing Journal). Before the influence of the media there was a time when it was not really something that had a huge impact on children and teens. But as time has change, children and teens are engaged with what the media has to provide such as reality TV to using social media.

One key boundary is that between citizen and consumer: this intersects with many debates regarding the role of the changing media environment in the privatisation or commercialisation of public space or, conversely, in the extension of the public – outside - world into the domestic. Popularly, citizens are active, engaged, informed, participatory and perhaps even resistant, while consumers are treated as commodities, markets, being managed and passive. This paper examines these changes, and these debates, in relation to children, young