Media is the main means of mass communications, such as televisions (TVs), radio, magazines and newspapers, which reach the wide majority of a population. It offers entertainment, culture, news, sports and education, and celebrities are regarded by young people as heroes and idols. The media is an important and often inescapable part of our lives and has much to teach but some of what it teaches may not be what we want our youth to learn. Our society is constantly bombarded with commercials whose purpose is to sway our buying habits, and with shows, movies and magazines which influence what we wear, like, and think. These messages are interpreted differently by young people and have a direct impact on their increase use of illegal, and sometimes prescribed, drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. There is a direct relation between the ways celebrities are viewed as having the perfect lifestyle and how teenagers believe illegal substances would enhance their life in the same way. The different sources of media also aid in this portrayal. Reality TV shows promote the use and abuse of drugs, alcohol and tobacco by celebrities and regular people who get their one minute chance in the limelight.
In today’s society, the media has many beneficial along with undesirable influences that determine the behavior of many teens and young adults. With its constant development and advancement, young people especially are constantly exploiting different sources of media in which indirect messages are influencing their behavior within society. Alcohol and drugs are the most common substances that are continuously portrayed in the media and consumed by our youth (Atkinson, Bellis, Elliot, and Sumnall, 6). Adolescents encounter a variety of alcohol and drug r...
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...is unrealistic to think that we can shield our children from it. If we do not have internet and TV at home we are certain to make our children feel like outcasts in society for they are unable to join in the conversation with their peers. When they are at their friends’ house, we are unable to control what they watch and hear. Instead, as a society, we must deviate from this obsession with celebrities and their addictions. Parents need to maintain an open line of communication with their children and teens and ensure that they are aware that what they see on TV is for entertainment purposes and should not be replicated for there will be real life consequences. Teenagers are more likely to abstain from drugs, alcohol and tobacco if they are engaged with other activities such as sports, outdoor activities, and a good communication relationship with their parents.
In general, the effects of television and drugs cannot be compared as equivalents; nevertheless, their study is worth of consideration. They are still two mysteries to be solved: why people spend so many hours in front of a TV set instead of doing something proactive and why people seeks refuge in drugs. We may not know all of the answers but we know all the of questions. While we walk towards the light hoping to find the answers to these mysteries, there are still many things to be done. In the meanwhile, one thing must remain in our minds: we will still face many obstacles together as society, with or without television and drugs.
Everyday people are peer pressured and influenced into multiple unhealthy behaviors. Acts such smoking, alcoholism, and unprotected intercourse are frequent issues in any lifestyle. Friends, family, and especially the media have a way of twisting a person’s mindset into believing these unhealthy choices are safe. Currently, the most reoccurring phenomenon is issues with drugs. More often than not, there are reports on people misusing and abusing drugs, particularly celebrities and athletes.
In an article ' The Plug-In Drug ' the author Marie Winn discusses the bad influence of television on today's society. Television is a ' drug ' that interfere with family ritual, destroys human relationships and undermines the family.
American actress, Lisa Bonet, once said, “What saddens me is the corruption of youth and beauty, and the loss of soul, which is only replaced by money.” Today’s television shows are decaying into more polluted and inappropriate ideas, which are then presented worldwide. This is a negative influence on not only young people, but also society as a whole. How can it be expected of youth today to be appropriate role models to future generations with such corrupt influences? With the filth, dishonesty, and abuse of freedom of speech, reality television ultimately does more harm on today’s society than good.
Moral panics surrounding the health, wellbeing, and behavior of teenagers have flared up consistently over the past decade, from getting drunk off vodka tampons to getting ‘high’ off MP3s downloaded on the Internet, or i-dosing. The popularity of the Internet among youth has inflamed moral panics, in which parents shift the blame onto a media form due to their fears about a new technology or a cultural phenomenon that they cannot control, and which they perceive as negatively impacting society. In his article The Cultural Power of an Anti-Television Metaphor, Jason Mittell discusses how framing a perceived societal ill as similar to a drug makes people believe it is a public health threat. The scientifically baseless moral panic of i-dosing illustrates the fears of parents, community authority figures, and the media that the Internet
One is that drug use, or experimenting with drugs as an adolescent, have become a normative part of the teenage culture. Declines in the number of teens who view substance use as harmful and increases in peer approval for getting high are associated with increased use of substances in social situations and party environments. There are also media factors that expose adolescents to positive drug and alcohol messages, such as on the internet, are increasing. Also Dallas’, a female from European decent, is more likely to use alcohol or illicit drugs than African American
In this century there has been a lot of attention toward the media and how its affects young people. Joyce Garity, author of “Is Sex All That Matters,” and Steve Lopez, “A Scary Time to Raise a Daughter,” write about how media such as magazines, the internet, and television affects teenagers. Both authors talk about how the media is using sex and violence to sell products, thus leading teenagers to commit wrongful deeds, including lack of using birth control leading to unwanted pregnancy, imitating girls on the magazines, and cannot distinct between fantasy and reality. Both Garity and Lopez explains how the teenagers do not have individuality and lose their virginity at a young age; Garity uses personal experience to state the point about media pounding messages about sex and violence directly at young people.
History of the debate Since the late nineteenth century the media has been a cornerstone of our society. It has, for long periods of time provided the public with a variety of debates. In social policy the amount of influence the media has on the public has been at the forefront of intellectual minds. One of the main groups who have gained the attention of the media since the outset of the 1950’s is youth in their various different forms. These considerations lead to three questions:- * What pressures are present in the production of media material and how do these pressures affect what eventually reaches the public via newspaper reports and other media sources such as television?
The media is often blamed for having a negative influence on adolescent life. Whether it is presented by means of television shows, magazines, advertisements, news, radio or any other means in which people communicate, the media displays an identity to these adolescents that society deems as sexual appeal and is characterized by sex, quality or state of being sexual. Media portrayals add to confusion on personal image, and can affect ones outlook on competition and violence (Federman, 1998). The media influences adolescents’ psychological and physical development during their cognitive development stage when it’s exposed to them (Schmidt, 2008). This is the stage when the adolescent is most vulnerable and sensitive to the surrounding in which they are growing and willingly absorbing information. If explicit behaviors arise often it can be influenced by explicit media exposure.
Drug portrayal in the media is increasing at an alarming rate, we can see drugs in a variety of different media outlets from original series on Netflix like “Orange is the new black” that is continuing to grow in popularity to movies and commercials for prescription drugs on television. Drug portrayal in the media is most influential to growing adolescents and can increase the use of illicit or licit substances that can be harmful and have potentially deadly affects to children at a young age. Often, the portrayal of drug use in the media today undermines our programs in schools that promote the awareness of the use of these substances and stresses to young children the idea to “just say no” to drugs and alcohols. Young adolescents are at more risk to engage in drug use, alcohol, or tobacco use at increasing rates due to the portrayal of these substance that they examine in the media. According to the research, the effects of all of this advertising are increasingly clear. A sample of 9- to 10- year-olds could identify the Budweiser frogs nearly as frequently as they could Bugs Bunny (Strasburger, V. C. 2010). It is clear that adolescents are engaging in riskier and unhealthy behaviors due to the use and portrayal of substance use in the media.
Therefore, when electronic cigarettes are marketed in ways where they look “cool” and “harmless,” as well as used by people who teens expose themselves to every day, or maybe even look up to, we fall into the trap. We all know the one place capable of influencing teens in major ways, Hollywood. Over just the past year, more celebrities have gotten photos taken of them while using electronic cigarettes than we have ever seen. Just a few examples include, Lindsay Lohan, Johnny Depp, Katy Perry, Paris Hilton, Kate Moss, and most recently, Leonardo DiCaprio seen vaping during the Oscar’s ceremony, a national televised event. Others have “lit up” shows like Saturday Night Live. Celebrities alone have an overwhelming effect on the teenage generation and the actions they decide to pursue. Therefore, when a young adult sees one of his or her favorite actors or their favorite artist using an electronic cigarette they see it as the “cool thing to do” or “a popular trend” of some sort. Celebrities taking part in that usage of electronic cigarettes is just one small factor of the marketing of e-cigs towards teenagers that has a large
This article talks about the effects of media exposure on adolescents and the violence that is can bring. Using the social conflict theory it portrays the media as having a harmful impression on today’s children. The article shows how crime statistics have decreased the arrests for violent crimes committed by youth offenders has not (Fowler, 2002). The article also shows how the APA is teaming up with federal programs to help resolve these harmful effects that the media is portraying. The article shows that media is responsible for the social conflict that these adolescents are dealing with. The APA and other organizations along with the federal government are combating this problem from every angle (Fowler, 2002). While the article does speak of some statistics it may be inflating them by not including a breakdown of what violent crimes are being committed.
In the article “From Dr. Dre to Dismissed: Assessing violence, Sex, and Substance use on MTV” Written by Stacy L. Smith MTV is one of the most watched programs in the whole world. Smith states, “394 million subscribers in 166 countries and territories” (Smith, 94). MTV is one of the most violent channels that portray sex and drugs as a positive thing. This channel not only talks about how people do it but how it’s good to do it because everyone is doing it. TV is starting to look like if it was something that youth would need for them to succeed. TV is not only influencing the teenagers but also the young adults showing them that if everyone is doing it than they should do it too. TV is having a big impact in children today and people can see that by seeing how drugs start being used because it’s a form to show that they are cool just as the same way as having sex at an early age symbolizing they are rebelled and lastly the use of language with profanity. By constantly watching TV channels such as MTV, children and teenagers are more likely to behave in the real world by being violent, experiencing sex too early, drug abusing and speaking with profanity.
I was quite surprised. A situation like this would definitely not happen in the United States, as attitudes towards youth with drugs and alcohol are generally negative. As an avid watcher of British teen dramas, I had seen these types of “European situations” depicted on television but never actually thought them to be true, or to have a distinguishable effect on the urban youth of today. This has led me to constantly wonder the connection between media representation of drug and alcohol consumption by young people and their actual drug and alcohol consumption in two very different cultures that speak the same language. In this document based essay, I will attempt to analyze what academics believe about television’s representation of drug use and its effect on the youth of the current century. Focusing on the television show Skins, produced both in the United States and the United Kingdom, I will use this information to compare and contrast the depiction of illicit consumption by young people in both the Unit...
“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.