It is widely held view that art imitates life. However, there exists an actual sense in which art is imitated by life. The power and influence of the media ensures that what is seen, heard and experienced in and through the media influence the behavior of teenagers whether they are conscious of it or not. It is clear that media is the one thing that is almost inseparable from the lives most teenagers. Teenagers are naturally curious. Faced with a multitude of choices and challenges, they often look for direction and guidance on how they can live their lives in today's society .As such, they are particularly susceptible to the media messages of behavior as acceptable, unacceptable, or normal. Since large parts of these messages are engrafted
Media is a very powerful tool, which can lead teenagers on their journey through life. This has invariably created tension between parents who have positive expectations for their teenagers and teenagers who view such expectation as hopelessly out- dated. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the influence of media on teenagers, especially how the media shapes the behavior of teens.
The literature on the influence of media on teenagers is vast and most of them have focused on the negative impacts. They seem to advance the view that the way youth react to situations, or their mode of thinking is wholly based on the effect of the media, particularly television and movies, music, videogames, and the internet. Youth in sense represents the age group between 13 and 20. The outcome of media influences has largely been negative, especially since the above forms of media have negatively influenced the behaviors and sexuality of the
My keen interest in all of these forms of media immediately drew me to the subject; television, film and music are major influences not only in my life but in the lives of teenagers across Western Europe, Australasia, Developed Asia and the United States of America. Despite this easy accessibility of popular culture - film, television, music and radio - to young people, popular culture and adolescence are not mutually exclusive with the effects and the range of mass media affecting one in three adults in America.... ... middle of paper ... ...
Clark, C, Ghosh, A, Green, E, Shariff,N. (n.d) Media Portrayal of Young People – impact and influences. [Internet], UK, Young Researcher Network. Available from: [Accessed 2nd January 2012]
Strasburger, V., M.D. (2010). Children, Adolescents, and the Media: Seven Key Issues. Pediatric Annals, 39(9), 556-64. Doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.3928/00904481-20100825-06
...ers, Kim. Sexual Teens, Sexual Media: Investigating Media’s Influence on Adolescent Sexuality. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002.
Strasburger, V., & Donnerstein, E. (1999). Children, Adolescents, and the Media: Issues and Solutions. Pediatrics, 103(1), 129-139.
Today’s young men are increasingly being influenced by the harming mass media. Starting at a young age, these young boys are big active users of many types of media such as watching countless number of hours of television, movies, and sports programs, listening to radio programs and CDs, and playing violent video games. These boys are increasingly surfing the Internet at record numbers unsupervised. All of these forms of media are making huge influential decisions in their lives. Young males are least likely to read beneficial sources of media such as newspapers and magazines.
The media, including television programming, cartoons, film, the news, as well as literature and magazines, is a very powerful and pervasive medium for expression. It can reach a large number of people and convey ideas, cultural norms, stereotypic roles, power relationships, ethics, and values. Through these messages, the mass media may have a strong influence on individual behavior, views, and values, as well as in shaping national character and culture. Although there is a great potential for the media to have a positive and affirming effect on the public and society at large, there may be important negative consequences when the messages conveyed are harmful, destructive, or violent.
Teenage girls are at an impressionable time in their lives. Mass media is a key part of one of the factors of socialization that become important to teenagers. Teenagers look to the media for entertainment. Whether it is movies, magazines, or even some aspects of social media, teenagers get a lot of influence from the media’s message. The problem with this is the media has a specific way of doing things and can be negative to a susceptible teenage girl.
Young people especially the teenagers are sensitive and receptive to learning new things. The media provides more than they can handle. Access to different programs, shows, and movies affect the manner that the teenagers behave. Today, it is unfortunate to say that the media is becoming more sexual and violent than the older days, resulting in similar behaviors among the teens (Craig, & Baucum, 2001). By watching programs intended for the adults, teenagers are drifting even further. They start behaving like adults without the prerequisites of becoming one. This means that they have contents that do not match with their ages. And then terrible things begin – increased college dropouts, teenage pregnancies, and increased cases of suicides. Some teenagers who had bright future ahead of them will
Mokeyane, K. Nola. "Media's Positive & Negative Influence on Teenagers." Everyday Life. Globalpost, Web. 21 Jan. 2010.
The Mass Media are the different processes that facilitate communication between the sender of a message and the receiver of that message. It plays an important role in the socialization of children. In fact, there are many types of media; these include newspapers, magazines, radio, films, CDs, Internet, and television. These kinds of media, especially television, affect children’s and adult’s behavior in different ways.
Violence, stereotyping, gender or sexual promiscuity, and even racism are shown to be negative effects of media outlets. With media being polarized, it becomes difficult to decipher what is the true influence that the media has. Media is currently known as a communication that has profound effects on the social identity of younglings. However, the effect media has on the identities of adolescents can go both ways of the spectrum when it comes to globalization. Globalization plays a big key role when it comes to technological advances such as media or communications; thus, shaping identity, a social concept, is being transformed or reformed in new and more global ways. With globalization rapidly growing in these past decades, communications and media have broken barriers in countries, letting ideas and thoughts emerge. By providing young people a way to communicate through communications and media, media provides a flow of information and adolescents take it in. Though, media and communications being one of the most significant moves of all time in technology or global advance, the ability for ideas to be enforced, to be corrupted by a false sense of security about what the world actually is on a adolescent, can become challenging. Although, knowing it can 't be reliable, it still acts in a sense to forms one identity. With media being one of the
The influence of mass media has changed the behavior of sections of society. Brown (2002) assert that the increase use of media has increasingly led youths to adopt overtly sexual behaviour. He writes;
“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” (Thinkexist, 2010). The mass media, including news, movies, magazines, music, or other entertainment source has become a part of daily life for many people. As the quote mentions mass media and its power are capable of influencing people’s mind and behavior. Contents in the media introduced to young people make it difficult for them to distinguish between what is real and what is not, as a result stimulating confusion and blind imitation. The mass media plays an important role in the increase of violence, sexual activity, and risky behaviors among teenagers.
Media technologies are becoming an important aspect of today’s society. Each and every day, people interact with media of many different forms. Media is commonly defined as being a channel of communication. Radio, newspapers, and television are all examples of media. It is impossible to assume that media is made up of completely unbiased information and that the media companies do not impose their own control upon the information being supplied to media users. Since many people use media very frequently, it is obvious to assume that it has affects on people. According to the text book Media Now, "media effects are changes in knowledge, attitude, or behavior that result from exposure to the mass media," (386). This leaves us with many unanswered questions about media and its influences. This paper will look at how the effects of media are determined and explore the main affects on today’s society - violence, prejudice, and sexual behavior.