Romance In The Media

Effects of the Romance in the Media on Adolescent Students One does not need to look far to realize that romance is everywhere in the media. Movies, television shows, and novels almost always have some sort of love story involved. This may seem like nothing more than a harmless fact until one considers the potential health of young adults. Parents and teachers no doubt have trouble finding material to show their children or students that does not involve a love story, but do they have any real reason to worry? Is the constant bombardment of romance having any detrimental effect on adolescences? It is not hard to automatically think “yes.” After all it is widely believed that violence in television and video games have contributed to juvenile

Bun describes her demographic by saying that “…the majority of the participants in this survey did not spend much time reading romance novels…Nonetheless, all Ideal Characteristics Scores were high in general showing that participants did have high expectations and ideals for their relationships,” (Bun, 50). Since this observation was made before the study was conducted, and it was clearly stated earlier that this group did not read a lot of romance, it is difficult to tell if these high expectations have anything to do with portrayal of love stories in the media. Furthermore, high expectations are not necessarily a bad thing as they can keep one from entering into an unhappy and possibly even abusive relationship. They become harmful, however, when one’s expectations become impossible to match. Where does one draw this line however? It’s all very

Perhaps not. In Clare Bare’s “Raunch or Romance” Bare looks at several studies and statistics that try to prove that romance in several media outlets are harmful and comes up with some interesting, but inconclusive results. Bare admits that there is a lot of research to state that romance in the media is bad, “Yet the research to support a view that the impact of the media on sexual health is negative is inconclusive; often derived from quantitative approaches that have been argued to be inappropriate and inadequate, and that have largely been discredited within the disciplines of media and cultural studies,”