Movies Influences Teens Behavior

Culture, defined as the art and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively. This can be anything from human’s paintings to their photography. Or, it could be their films. The endless movies that come out year after year, some even simple remakes of ones made years ago. But, even if they are simply remakes, we pay to view almost every last one of them. Movies impact everyone. And doing so impacts, what was defined prior, culture. In society today, the movies bombards teens with images and trends. Movies show popular culture; what the trends are, what people should be wearing, what they should be listening to, how they should act, and what they should look like. Pop culture, in turn, defines what one should

act like through movies. Wherever we look, television and movie images show us the cultural standard, what we should be like and what we should do to fit in. The standards that girls should be beautiful and sexy, and boys smart and strong, are present throughout these images. All these images get engraved in people's minds, consciously and subconsciously, sending messages that boys and girls act in a certain manner. Just like if you hear something enough times, you start to believe it. Well, people are believing it all right. Movies have influenced people and popular culture, for over a century now. While there is no denying there is influence from today’s movies on popular culture, one might wonder in what way. How has one been influenced? Has it been good or bad? It seems that the common opinion is the influence has been negative. Parents believe that movies are beginning to influence their teens for the worst. Sex, drugs, and violence are extremely prevalent in popular movies nowadays. Scientists who study the cinematic influence on teens agree with parents. Movies influence teens in a negative manner. Movies influence our teens, who run and are ran by today’s pop culture.
Almost no one could agree more to the fact the media is being a negative influence on teens than Elizabeth Kolbert. Journalist for the New York Times, Kolbert published a paper titled Americans Despair Of Popular Culture, telling her views about the media’s negative influence on teen sexual behavior. She blames movies, in part, for teenagers becoming sexually active earlier. In her publication, Kolbert describes a study conducted in which “ half of surveyed said they believed portrayals to contribute “a lot” to whether teens become sexually active…”.(Kolbert) While people watch on average four hours of media a day, half of them did not have anything good to say about what they watch.(Kolbert) But, nine out of ten people had negative thoughts on what was viewed.(Kolbert) These thoughts being that there was too much sex, violence, etc. in what they viewed. Adults agree that what they watch is negative, and seventy-six percent of surveyed agree that movie ratings fail at keeping their children away from inappropriate movies.(Kolbert) While agreeing with this survey, though, Kolbert also included a contradictory quote from a father. The father said that while he tries to screen what his kids watch, ratings on movies could be better. But, he also says “kids are always going to want to watch what we don't want them to”.(Kolbert) Kolbert agrees that teens are having a bad impression pushed on them, but also seems to agree that they will watch whatever they want to. She does not seem to pose an answer to how one could change these negative influences. Someone who does seem to have an answer to that is Ph. D. Kelly L’Engle. While she agrees with our first author, Kolbert, on there being a bad impression on teens from movies, she has more to offer on the subject of how to fix it.
L’Engle believes that the media should be doing something about the negative sexual content in movies. This seems to agree with the adults surveyed by Kolbert, but not exactly Kolbert herself. L’Engle says that the media has a direct link to teens. She backs up that statement in her article, The Mass Media are an Important Context for Adolescents’ Sexual Behavior, by saying “Adolescence is a developmental period that is characterized by intense information seeking, especially about adult roles, and given the lack of information about sexuality readily available to teens, adolescents may turn to the media for information about sexual norms”.(L’Engle) L’Engle then calls out the media as needing to change what is happening by next saying “mass media influences should receive increased attention from practitioners and researchers who aim to reduce adolescents’ participation in sexual risk behavior”.(L’Engle) But, in saying this, L’Engle basically opposes every other author’s view. Especially those of authors Erin Roach and Carol Potera, who both agree that parents should be the ones to fix the negative impact of movies.
Roach, author of Sex in Movies Influences Teens’ Behavior, uses a study to show the need for parent involvement in teen’s movie viewing.

The study, initially published online July 18, 2012, recruited more than 1,200 participants who were from 12 to 14 years old and asked them to report which movies they had seen from several different collections of 50 that were randomly selected.(Roach) After additional questions to determine key factors, and six years of waiting, the results showed what all authors agree on at this point. It “strongly suggested that parents need to restrict their children from seeing sexual content in movies at young ages”.(Roach) Roach goes on to say that when parents allow their kids to view sexually explicit films, real lives are impacted.(Roach) Parents may take it for granted but their kid’s future positive behavior is at stake. But, now that the Roach has been proven correct by the study, he can attempt to fix the problem. Roach believes that parents should watch the films with their teens, and pose questions to make them really think about what they are viewing.(Roach) This being the opposite of L’Engle, who believes media needs to influence the change in movies teens view. Roach then goes as far as telling parents to make sure that they are sorting “fact and fiction” for the teens as the view special effects.(Roach) And, being religious and writing this article for Baptist Press, also says that we need to replace current movie types with ones based on The Bible.(Roach) “What teenagers most need is a new set of 'movies'.(Roach) The Bible is the 'novel'.(Roach) Teenagers need to read and study the book, absolutely.(Roach) But they also need to see the 'movie' based on the book".(Roach) But, while no author agrees or disagrees with Roach’s special effect or “bible movie” idea, seldom do they mention anything close. Someone who does agree that parents should be in the middle of teen’s movie interaction is Carol

Potera.
Author of Sex and Violence in the Media Influence Teen Behavior, Potera agrees that parents need to step up and talk about sexual scenes in films viewed by their teens. That they should be watched together, as a family, and talked about at the end.(Potera) This is just a little different from previously mentioned Roach’s ideas. But, similarly, Potera talks about a study done in order to prove that the media has negative influence on teens, such as pregnancy. Or as Potera puts it, "a prospective link between watching the shows and becoming pregnant”.(Potera) Potera also says that teens who watched movies “ with sexual content were two to three times more likely to become pregnant or to impregnate someone than were teens who watched the least”.(Potera) Parents are the only ones who can stop the correlation of sexual content filled movies and teen pregnancy. As said, this lands Potera in agreement with Roach, but that’s where the connections end between her and the aforementioned authors. Agreeing with Roach means together they disagree with the other authors; Kolbert and L’Engle. This also leaves one author way out there from these four. His name is Siobham (Reeves), and he believes that movies can influence teens in more than just promiscuity. He also differs from all other authors when he focuses his points on one specific movie example and a single gender.
Is popular culture, through films like “Mean Girls”, polluting the minds of our high school girls? is the title of Reeves article. And it doesn’t try to hide the fact that he is calling out the movie for having a negative influence on our teens just like the other movies do. This is a way that all the authors opinions talk to each other and say they agree.They all blame movies, such as Mean Girls for teen behavior. Reeves says that “this film revels in teenage vulgarity for the vast majority of the film”.(Reeves) And this is obviously true when he goes on to state what types of “humor” the film contains. Homosexuality, drug addiction, bullying, and “retards” are the subject of crude jokes.(Reeves) Those are just a few of his top mentions, and this movie could allow Reeves to go on for days with all the bad influences it contains. Again, this is something all the authors can definitely agree on, movies are terrible influences on today’s popular culture and teens. While he singles out a movie and gender, Reeves is still in agreement with all the authors. It is when he fails to suggest a way to fix it that the authors somewhat differ. Reeves offers no take on what could be done to turn movies into a positive influence while the other authors do.
All authors agree that movies are a terrible influence of today’s teens and popular culture, to conclude. It is only when it comes down to how to fix those movies that the authors have any real disagreement. Though Roach and Potera are in agreement with the fact that parents should do the “fixing”, that is where it stops. L’Engle gives us the opposite side when she tells us in her article she believes the media should make changes to the influence on teens who are our pop culture. Whereas Kolbert simply says kids will be kids and Reeves doesn’t even have any input on the subject. Agreeing that movies are a negative influence on teens and popular culture, does not let you agree as to how to solve it. Teens and popular culture remain doomed in these author’s eyes, and they cannot agree as to how to solve it.