Influence Of Individuality In The Media

“Momma, look what Jessica commented on Facebook about my new haircut,” the girl says, pulling up the hateful post to read for the third time that day. Her mother looks at the degrading words and frowns. “Oh, don’t worry what she thinks, sweetie. Your hair looks great just how it is,” her mother reassures her. “No, momma. Nobody else’s hair is like this. I want my hair like one of those pretty girls on TV!” Unfortunately, individuality has become an extinct quality in today’s youth. Teenagers begin to change themselves to be more like other people shown in the media to avoid criticism. Although some people believe the media inspires teenagers to be better people or to pursue their dreams, the media can also suppress individuality and

Most modern television shows openly display actors drinking, smoking, and using drugs. Studies have proven such factors to produce detrimental effects on teenagers. For instance, in 1998 a study found that for every extra hour of television watched per week, there was a nine percent increase in the chance of that child drinking alcohol in the following eighteen months. In addition, women do not usually find good role models in most media. Teenagers who look up to certain celebrities on television, in magazines, or social media may get unrealistic ideals on their body image. Mainly occurring with females, idolizing other body types can cause a girl to feel self-conscious about her looks or personality. To fix this issue, she may begin to diet and exercise excessively and if it does not work out for her the way she had planned; she will feel even more ashamed of her body (“Entertainment”). Although men can still experience this problem, it is more common and usually more extreme with

Many people experience some sort of public shaming while on social media which can lead to depression and sometimes suicide. In a lecture about the spiraling effects of shaming on social media, Jon Ronson refers to social media shaming as a “weapon” (Ronson). This weapon is used to destroy other people by posting harmful words or pictures which can sometimes end people’s careers. For instance, a woman from New York named Justine Sacco was tweeting jokes to her 170 twitter followers one day when something began to go wrong. She tweeted “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” While she meant for this tweet to be perceived as a joke about how Caucasian people consider themselves immune and too superior to receive such a disease, it was not taken that way. As she was on a plane, thousands of people were sharing her post and immediately began shaming her. They threaten her career, taking it into their own hands and deciding that “it was their duty to get her fired” (Ronson). They even start to threaten her health as they tweet about how they now hope that someone HIV positive would rape her, seeing if her skin color would protect her from AIDS then. Horrible things like this, all because of a misinterpreted tweet that was supposed to be about some of the overly-privileged people in America. Teenagers all across the world saw these posts. The media, in this case, was in no way demonstrating kindness or any