The Importance Of Media Literacy

The course provides an introduction to the most prominent forms of media that influence and impact social, business, political, and popular culture in contemporary America. It explores the unique aspects of each medium as well as interactions across various media that combine to create rich environments for information sharing, entertainment, business, and social interaction in the U.S. and around the world.

Throughout time and history, the concerns of many have been made regarding the influence of the media on children and our young people. Although media, its various forms and those who are in control of them have changed throughout as time has progressed, the concerns still are the same. Plato wrote about the influence that poets had on young people of his time in the same way that those who have analyzed this issue today have revealed the effects of literature and television on today's children.

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

. Today's information and technology will communicate to us through a powerful combination of words, images, and sounds. Now to answer your question, should Media Literacy be taught in schools? Yes, Media Literacy should be taught in school because many people, specifically young teenagers don't question what they hear, see, or listen on any media platform. Without media literacy being in our society people would have poor communication skills. We should see

By definition, Media Literacy is defined as the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media. The power of the media should not be underestimated. Millions of teens and adults spend hours watching television and surfing the web on a daily basis. With the use of media literacy, these individuals that utilize hours of their daily lives can be protected from pressures of media disinformation that also pushes them to become the idealistic human model it wishes them to be. By teaching majority of our communities about media literacy, we can free them from the standardized pressures of society itself. These free beings will no longer feel the needs to live up to the expectations of the media as they will discover the falsified truth when analyzed deeply. Educating the population will not only free their minds mentally, but it will strengthen their capability of thinking also. Media Literacy provides opportunities for anyone to build communication skills, boost his or her confidents to interpret multiple media sources at the same time, and as well as realistically designating the portrayal of his or her position along with others’ in a perspective view. One can take advantage of media literacy to improve his or her media use habits, such as constant television viewing behaviors. With the impact of educating the life of an individual with Media Literacy, we can advance the habitual uses of media of that human being’s family and develop more intellectual

It is no lie when it’s said that media influences human decisions. For adults, it could be the newest fashion trends. Perhaps which restaurant has the highest rating and seems to be the most luxurious. For children, it’s the same. Nobody is spared from society and the media’s norms.

Media holds an unimaginable power to influence and shape consumer’s ideologies on all aspects of daily life whether we realize it or not. Our generation spends so much time browsing and engaged in media that we become blinded to our minds being constantly feed with the media industry’s agenda. For example, it has become very popular to see children being targeted by media at a very young age. Thousands of commercials and TV productions instill ideas in children at a young age of how they need to fit into this mold. The common theme of teach them when they are still young, otherwise they will grow up to be unpopular and not well liked causes parents to feel pressure from society to make sure their children turn out a certain way.

In the article, “Confessions of a news junkie who hides the news from his kids,” Barry Gittins discusses the topic of mass media, he asserts that it has misguided children. Mass media has always been something to inform people. Yet, it’s the over consumption of media seems to affect the mental and physical wellness of children. This new generation of advancing gadgets and devices has altered children’s way of life and connections. The best way to avoid harming the child’s mental and physical wellness is moderation on the screens. Parents claim that in their youth, they used their creativity or sensibility to create things that make them occupied and entertained them. Children are only children once. So, why not bring that back and help the

This week, I watched the movie “ Miss Representation”, it is a documentary in 2011 and Jennifer Siebel Newsom is the director, producer and was written by her. I watched the film on Thursday, July 30, 2015, I watched it on my computer and I was watching it at home. The documentary is about we human are failing to see the real world that we lives in. It talks about that media is a very powerful tool of delivering messages to the world. The documentary starts with some numbers of information that tell us that American teenager: “spend 31 hours a week watching TV, 17 hours a week listening to music, 3 hours a week watching movies, 4 hours a week reading magazines, 10 hours a week online, and that is 10 hours and 45 minutes of media consumption a day” (“ Miss Representation”). Nowadays, people are going to learn more from media, then any other things because each of us has just spent too much time on it, and everyone does have their own ways to have the interaction of the media. And the media are just everywhere around us.

Therefore, the media education can be used to counteract the effect of these messages. There are crucially essential lessons to achieve a society in which

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.

Even at the most tender of ages, children are already active in the use of the media. The television is the main media that the children are exposed to at this early age. It may seem that the children do not understand anything in the televisions and could lead to some disputing the idea of its involvement in

Media influence is the force by which ideas are injected into people’s lives shaping the very culture of society. This influence is masqueraded through hidden media message, resulting in a change in its audience which can be positive or negative, abrupt or gradual, short term or long term. Although mass media’s influential effect can reach a wide ranged audience as an agent of socialization the responsibility to contain what it releases has not been of importance. “The media’s socially significant obligations are formally ignored.” (A.S. Zapesotskii, 2011, p 9). Media messages can be exerted through many different outlets such as TV shows, music, movies, commercials, news, magazines, games which are all gravitated to entertain audiences ultimately offering personal gratification that can sometimes blur the lines between reality and

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

The worth of media is a very controversial topic. Media has given us the ability to do things in new and creative ways such as how we learn and accomplish our everyday tasks. However, we do not always know how to interpurate this information. The technology available today is constantly impacting and influencing society in tremendous ways. Many of the impacts that are accocated with media are addressed in negative ways, but can be seen from a positive perspective as well. In the current generation, media and its influences can be found everywhere. These influences widely impact today’s adolescents and maturing teenagers because they are still developing into adults. Medias purpose is not only to inform us, but to allow us to mold ourselves in how we want to be perceived online. Also, it allows us easy access to unbelievable amounts of information. Living in an era known as the “information age” is riveting, but what are we suppose to do with all of this new technology and information?