Effects of Mass Media on Young Generation

How do the media influence young people in today's society? Our society still seems confused about what to think about children and young people. It seems to be gripped with a fear of children, blaming them for much of society's ills: crime, vandalism, drugs, drink, sex, teenage pregnancy. The list goes on. But if these theories are true, where do these rebellious attitudes stem from? The obvious answer would be from the upbringing of children, but in my opinion the media also plays a substantial role in the attitudes, behavior and physical aspects of youth today, in particularly that of young women. We are constantly being bombarded with advertising, opinions, images and stories which appear to be forcing us to conform to a specific image of how we are supposed to be, whether it be slim, more intelligent or prettier.

Media strongly affects youth culture. The media executives are quick to defend their role in youth violence and bullying while selling millions of dollars in ads focused on youth. TV producers, network executives, motion picture companies and others in the media deny any impact of their programs on the attitudes and actions of youth. Meanwhile they continue to spend millions on special effects and marketing geared to increase appeal to youth markets. While corporations spend millions on market research and advertising to create products and campaigns targeted at a youth demographic, they still deny their ability to influence youth. If this were true to fact, would NIKE continue spending millions every year on product development, marketing and advertising? Would McDonalds still be using cartoon like characters to sell hamburgers? Would music labels be increasing the level of violence and sexual content in the music geared towards the youth audience? Would liquor companies be using youth oriented activities in their advertising? Of course it works on influencing youth and its ideals advertising would not be a multi-billion dollar a year business. If it had no influence, M-TV would not have consultant on staff spending huge amounts of money to ensure them keeping up with youth culture.


We've all heard it before. Blame it on TV or other means of media. If a child bludgeons another child to death with a wrench or shoots a classmate, it is the violent TV programs that they watch which are to blame, not the parents or the supervisors who are supposed to be there to make sure their kids do the right thing. How far is it true that the media is responsible for trivializing death and violence, thus causing the children of America to go out on shooting rampages, or kids in Britain to murder innocent toddlers? First let us look at the way the media portrays death. Death has always been a taboo subject. People do not usually sit around talking about death, especially to children. It may be for that reason that children do not really understand the concept of dying. We constantly see instances in cartoons where a character is killed, but in the next scene, that same character is alive and well again. The fact is that they do not actually die. Characters like Warner Bros. Wild E Coyote never die.


As clichéd as it may sound, it has been rightly said all things have their good as well as bad effects. In the similar conduct media also has its good as well as bad influence on youth. Well these were the negative influence of media on youth. Now we focus on the affirmative aspects of media.

Media plays a very important role in creating awareness. There are certain issues which remain untouched among youngsters as they feel guarded concerning it. Media helps in providing information regarding such topics. There are many such topics that are highlighted by the media. The current one that can be talked about is the quota system in colleges. Media created awareness that how injustice was being done with deserving candidates due to reservations in colleges. There was procession taken out by students in order to object regarding this bias discrimination.
One other such issue is the debate carried on regarding sex education. Media was trying to highlight both the aspects of the matter that whether sex education must be allowed in schools or not. There were a group of people who were all for it and there were people who considered it a taboo. Even though we are heading towards westernization, our roots still remain Indian. And that is the reason why we fell anxious discussing such issues with young ones. But if we think practically then there are so many instances where children head the wrong way just in the anxiety of knowing certain issues. So, the only acceptable approach in which we can guard our child from choosing the wrong path is by talking to them and educating them about the issues that need to be learnt at the right instance.

Media being one of the important means to reach out to the masses and influence their thinking and decision making, only to the positive media cannot attract attention of the masses, and to gain viewer ship, negative media has to be incorporated to balance out and attract the masses, but a line has to be drawn between the positive and the negative media in the interest of the younger generation.

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/article-marketing-articles/effects-of-mass-media-on-young-generation-562352.html

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