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Role of the media in consumer lives
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Both Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You and Thomas DeZengotita's Mediated deal with the idea of increased density of available choices in today's culture. For every product and activity, there are countless decisions to be made. From food to clothing to office supplies, there are so many options to sift through. Theory and analysis of this increasing complexity for consumers of products and the media are explored by both authors.
The thesis of Everything Bad is Good for You is this: people who deride popular culture do so because so much of pop culture's subject matter is banal or offensive. But the beneficial elements of video games and TV arise not from their subject matter, but from their format, which require that players and viewers winkle out complex storylines and puzzles, getting a "cognitive workout" that teaches the same kind of skills that math problems and chess games impart. As Johnson points out, no one evaluates the benefit of chess based on its storyline or monotonically militaristic subject matter.
Mediated is difficult to describe. Imagine that you are the sun, and every flower on Earth points toward you, every leaf on every tree angles toward you. This is somewhat similar to the situation we, as 21st-century Americans, face every day. Each of us is at the center of our own solar system, surrounded every day by hundreds of flattering appeals for our attention, be it television, radio, books, magazines, billboards, etc. What effect does this have? How do we, who are practically the stars of our own reality shows, compare to our grandparents, whose media intake was but a trickle? How do kids growing up today find their way through the constant barrage of information, advertising, and entertainment? Is there anything left in the world that's still real, or is "real" the best we can hope for? DeZengotita neither celebrates nor condemns our situation, but he does a great job of describing it.
DeZengotita's second chapter of Mediated is based on the idea that children spend more time in the adolescent phase of life due to the options they are faced with. The learning curve is the same as it used to be, but kids are faced with so much more to learn now that it takes them longer to deal with becoming an informed adult. They have to choose who they want to be as an adult, and there are just too many options for them to sort out in the amount of time their parents went through the process.
Video games are bad. Because when somebody plays and gets off it makes them in a bad mood. But video games are good to kill time. And video games are getting more better and they are getting better graphics. And it looks better like if you were there.
Videogames are amazing they promote creativity, team-work and social interaction. Video games actually work to increase how good your eyesight is. One study done by scientist’s Daphne Bavelier and her team found that playing five to fifteen hours of action games (e.g., Call of Duty) a week increased how good the participants vision was in two ways "The first way is that they 're actually able to resolve small detail in the context of clutter… The other way that they are better is actually being able to resolve different levels of grey”. Sure games have violence in them but honestly what doesn’t, films and TV are chock full of it, heck even Tom and Jerry promote violence and animal abuse plus there is a reason that those big shiny red “18” stickers are put on games so that it is clearly shown that children aren 't supposed to be given access to these specific types of game. As for the “waste of time” nothing is really a waste of time if you gain something from it such as
Tom Bissell, whom is the author of the article Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter starts off his article uniquely by creating a theoretical situation in which he is telling his future children that he missed the 2008 presidential inauguration, because he was playing video games. He talks about Fall Out 3, Oblivion and other games he calls, open world games, which are games with no designated path with the possibilities being almost limitless. Bissell explains how attractive the graphics are along with how interested in the story you can become. He admits how much time he has spent playing and how irritated the games make him at times. Bissell doesn’t clarify anywhere that he believes video games are good or bad for anyone, he just shares his experience with video games for others to think about or relate to.
There are many people who say that videogames and TV will rot your brain and cause brain damage. Plenty of research and articles are against children playing video games, but there are some that are in favor of video games, and that number is growing every day. Video games can have some medicinal uses from helping patients in physical therapy to improving ones vison. Many people do not see these uses and for every one for video games there are five who are against it, however as that number is slowly growing.
Video games have improved a lot since they were first introduced. They have also made a lot of impacts in our generation by making gamers more social, teaching children through educational video games, and how video games can improve our health. Furthermore, the articles show many different ways that proves that video games aren’t bad for you physically and emotionally. Since video games were introduced they have changed our society.
Skills and their educational benefits are positive factors of video games, while the detrimental factors include violence and potential addiction. Overall, video games are acceptable to use in moderation, but when one does not have the ability to use it in moderation, it is harmful.
Everywhere we look we see advertisements, commercials, news reports, who seem to influence our daily lives. Media we would not normally think of can also affect us. For example, the mere mention of Red Lobster in Beyoncé’s song “Formation” boosted their overall sales while the song was on the charts. Chapter one of the Dines and Humez text covered perception of the audience, study of culture and media, and how the media is “multiperspectival” (Dines and Humez).
It’s true, video games do affect how its players live their lives, but it may not be just quite how the media portrays its effects. Many parents believe that the violent games their kids are playing is causing a negative effect on their child, research contradicts this. Many studies have found that there is a huge positive side of playing video games. How Games Make Kids Smarter, a Ted Talk by Gabe Zichermann, tells the listener a story of how using educational based games in the classroom increased the students’ scores as well as their interest in school. Another study done by Stewart Trost, Deborah Sundal, and Gary Foster shows how active video games actually help lower obesity as well as increase activity rates within the tested children.
...ger effect than what it could be. Society should try to help persuade others that video games positively effect the nation and others who play it. Video games were created for positive reasons, and to increase human-kind’s technology and graphics. Let’s all call to action to help defend players and their games, as one can see they have major benefits that could improve society further than it already is.
Although there are researches shows that there are positive effects of violent video games, it has not changed the fact that video games have stronger influence on people than other media, few positive effect cannot outweigh its impact on people.
But the question is why? While some people believe that video games are just good clean fun, others believe that these games greatly affect our generation in a negative way, increasing aggression and sometimes pushing consumers to the edge causing events like the forever notorious shootings in Virginia Tec.
However, video games have not always been, and even today still aren’t, a completely accepted mode of recreation. These games have caused a large amount of controversy, dating back to one of the first games to come under fire back in the mid-1970s. The problem that certain groups in society saw with video games exploded with one of the more famous cases where a video game was brought to court over its contents in the early 1990s with the introduction of Mortal Kombat, one of the first household games that included blood. Even today, games continue to be criticized for characteristics that have been labeled as violent, sexist, or immoral and are blamed for instilling these ideas into those who play the games. However, these arguments do not have any merit. While video games may display actions and properties that have been deemed as cynical and detrimental, they do not cause significant negative behavioral changes in the players. It is the exact opposite: games have a positive effect on their players and the people around them.
First video games are not harmful to the public quite the contrary actually. Many video games encourage social behavior and team work whether that is the two player cooperative shooter game that two brothers play together working as a team inspiring positive feelings overriding the negative ones as stated in the study coauthored by David Ewoldsen. Or a family on game night all playing a game together and having a great time and bonding together because of the experience. And many games today don’t stop there at just play together and have fun. Many games promote teamwork skills through puzzles which can be solved together, or enemies that the players must work together to defeat. These positive social effects are not limited to one’s family but extend into online play, where one can converse and enjoy his time with others, creating entire
Some parents argue that these video games have positive impact on their children's life. They become more skilled. They learn strategies to win the game. Once they lose, they discuss ways in which they could have played better. As such, these video games help children to think and react quickly. They help them to plan their moves. In short, these games help the players to become better strategists. They develop thinking skills. Other argue that those children are good achiever at school who are familiar to these video games Another counter argument is that parents allow their children to play video games to relive anger and relax their body. Children become independent and confident make them busy and parents also do their work peacefully.
Pop culture is a reflection of social change, not a cause of social change” (John Podhoretz). It encompasses the advertisements we see on T.V, the clothes we wear, the music we listen too, and it’s the reason Leonardo DiCaprio has not won an Oscar yet. It defines and dictates the desires and fears of the mainstream members of society; and it is so ingrained into our lives that it has become as natural as breathing. Moreover, adults never even bat an eyelash at all the pop culture and advertising that surrounds them since it has become just another part of everyday life. Pop culture is still somewhat seen as entertainment enjoyed by the lower class members of society; but pop culture standards change over time. A notable example of this is the sixteenth century author, William Shakespeare, since his works were considered pop culture, entertainment that could be enjoyed by everyone, but now they are considered literary classics. While pop culture encompasses most aspects of our lives, its influence is most obvious through each generations reaction to media,