Media & Youth

When I wake up in the morning, I listen to the radio while getting ready, I watch television or YouTube while eating dinner and listen to the radio while driving. Aside from me, if we see teenagers are almost always around the media. And as teenagers, their minds are a lot more absorbent to the things being spread by mass media. How can media not influence people’s lives? We see Miley Cyrus singing with bikinis and doing all nasty things, hear about our favorite celebrities getting arrested for doing drugs and watching fake violent shows like WWE as well as the lyrics of some of the most popular songs. We see the people we idolize fall and hit rock bottom. We see celebrities in photos with no fat; perfect skin and told by media that is the beauty! The photos we are seeing are almost all photoshopped, those people do not exist. But yet our brain tells us we need to look like them, we need to lose a lot of weight no matter what. Desperate Housewives is the most popular broadcast-network television show according to statistics.

In Desperate housewives you have four beautiful women that are married. In that series you have: adultery; underage drinking; bisexuality; blackmail; children running away and so much more. If this is what the youth of today take as entertaining, they are going to try the same things, try drugs; try bisexuality, start to disobey their parents and everything else they are witnessing. When one witnesses a lot of fighting; death and violence on the screen, they can become so used to it that they will stop feeling any sort of remorse if they hurt someone else. The youth can stop having empathy for those who have been hurt or in a fight and finally little by little everyone will stop to feel for others. Advertisements or some TV shows raise the standards of women and men on how they should look like. Media influence men and women to get the “perfect body shape” by using models. This is verified to be true because according to “Media Influence on Youth”, a study shows that 69% of girls are influenced by magazine models.

These are models in billboards that show a “perfect body”. One example is Angel Locsin posing for a Folded and Hung billboard. A lot of people can see this especially the youth, for they are one of the target markets of media. According to “Media Influence on Youth” by the time a girl turns eight years old, she becomes weight conscious. 80% of nine year olds start dieting and since 1970, eating disorders have grown by 400%. This only proves that media has a big impact on the youth today. According to Witmer, teenage girls, who are the target of media, see the idea of thinness as a beauty. This will cause eating disorders and some even turn to smoking for weight loss.

Media also expose sex. Movies and TV shows people who are doing it, just like “Game of throne” which shows a lot of sexual scenes. A lot of teens are exposed to these kinds of TV series. Even though some movies only show kissing and flirting. These are still forms of sexual acts. Three out of four say that “TV shows and movies show sexual scenes that it may seem normal for teenagers to have sex. Also, music videos contain more sex per minute than any other media. The youth loves watching those videos and this will have a great effect on how sex may affect them. Print media also deliver the message of sex; for example, the ads for Guess. A lot of their billboards show a black and white picture of a man and a woman, close to each other which appears to be an intimate connection between the models. The pictures used on magazines covers or social media are partially naked which suggest sex.

Harms of Media to youth
Impact of horror movie and cartoons
Teenager who watch horror movie and show may have some emotional or psychological problems. And they are more likely to develop anxiety, sleep disorders, and aggressive and self-endangering behaviors. Media expose everything to children

Television can show children what their parents may not want them to know. Similarly teenager who use internet could know many unethical things. Movies inspire youth toward bad behaviors
There are many researches that demonstrate when underage children inspired by heroes; they start using loose words and smoking because teens adapt bad habits from media more readily as compared to adults. Obesity

Marketing and advertisement plays central role in rise of junk food obesity. It’s estimated that 80% of adolescents who are overweight will remain so into their adulthood. This is all because of food commercials every 10 minute during TV broadcast provoking our senses to buy junk food. Poor academic performance

Too much media is proven to have negative impact on study readiness and academic performance. Specifically poor grades and low reading ability and vocabulary are connected with too much media usage and “multitasking” of the school goers. Many experts say academic success equals to turn off the TV according to researches. Violence

Watching media significantly increases the risk that a viewer or video game player will behave aggressively in both short and long term. Media violence is linked to concentration and self-control problems. Especially children may come to see the world as a mean and scary place, or they may come to expect other to resort to physical violence to resolve conflicts and makes them react aggressively years later as adults.