Teens, Morality and Media
Media plays a larger and more important role in society than ever before simply because of its progression. The technology has developed from radios and television sets to handheld cell phones that combines the capabilities of several devices into one. Smartphone users can tap into an internet source from just about anywhere in the world and stream television shows or videos, play games, listen to music, connect with friends or strangers or explore an abundance of information about any topic they so desire in seconds. The growth of technology has rapidly advanced over the past two decades and in correlation media has grown with it, thus, ingraining itself into society. Teenagers of today cannot imagine a life without
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A key focus of media is beauty. Teenagers can not watch television or scroll through a social media feed without seeing a photoshopped picture of a model or celebrity. This tactic of the media is typically targeted towards girls. Because these images have been a part of the daily life of a teenager as long as he/she can remember, he/she lack the ability to see that it is a fake or enhanced image which eliminates their understanding that the presented level of beauty is truly unobtainable. Instead teens feels inspired or pressured to have to look, dress and act like the models and celebrities the media bombards them with. In a study, Hogan and Strasburger conducted “...research shows that regular readers of …show more content…
The important factor of cyberbullying that makes it so popular is that it can be done anonymously. This teaches teenagers that they do not need to take responsibility for their actions, and that in some causes they will never have to pay the consequences. Teenagers do not realize the morally wrong in their actions or how it affects the victim of their taunting. The action can affect the victims in several ways such as leading towards depression and anxiety or even as extreme as suicidal thoughts. (Hurley) Media has allowed teenagers to bully another and think it is okay that it is done. Often times the child never gets caught. If the content is reported to the social media provider, it is often just erased, but that does not teach kids anything. Instead, it almost encourages the rude and disrespectful behavior. In the long run this affects the morality of teens because it can disguise rude and harmful behavior to be okay and tolerable when in reality it is
Media is infamous for having a tremendous effect on teenage girls. The mass media have long been criticized for presenting unrealistic appearance ideals that contribute to the development of negative body image for many women and girls (Harrison & Hefner, 2006). Whether it’s the influence on their choice of friends, school, or their self image, media has played an important role in affecting those decisions. A growing number of experimental studies have demonstrated a causal link between acute exposure to "thin-ideal" images (i.e., images of impossibly thin and attractive female beauty) and increased body dissatisfaction (Hargreaves & Tiggemann, 2003). It has recently been brought up that media influences girls in preadolescence, which is highly likely since most young girls idolize Barbie (Rintala & Mustajoki, 1992). “Were Barbie a flesh-and-blood woman, her waist would be 39% smaller than that of anorexic patients, and her body weight would be so low that she would not be able to menstruate” (Rintala & Mustajoki, 1992). Most young girls wish that they could look like Barbie when they grew up, but if they knew the reality of having her measurements their perceptions would probably change. Children frequently fantasize about who they will be, what they will do, and how they will look when they grow into adulthood.
To begin, social media has created unrealistic standards for young people, especially females. Being bombarded by pictures of females wearing bikinis or minimal clothing that exemplifies their “perfect” bodies, squatting an unimaginable amount of weight at a gym while being gawked at by the opposite sex or of supermodels posing with some of life’s most desirable things has created a standard that many young people feel they need to live up to. If this standard isn’t reached, then it is assumed that they themselves are not living up to the norms or the “standards” and then therefore, they are not beautiful. The article Culture, Beauty and Therapeutic Alliance discusses the way in which females are bombarded with media messages star...
Teens use technological devices as weapons through the use of social networking websites, text messaging and other ways. Teenager use these social networking websites and text messaging to make fun of one another, call each other names and threaten one another all to the point where the victim feels worthless and ends up with psychological problems or in the worst scenario, committing suicide. The most famous website that teenagers use these days for cyberbullying is Facebook; they login to their account and write a status about their victim and tag their victim on the status or ask a friend who has the victim as a friend to tag him or her in a comment below the status. Teenagers also use chat rooms to post pictures of their victim and publicly humiliate and make fun of their victims and others usually join in adding to it. I decided to write about cyber bullying because it has been happening a lot lately and as a mother I am really concerned about it, so I would like to know what to do in case my children were to go through a situation like that. I took advantage that it’s a good topic for a research essay...
Female beauty ideals are an overwhelming force in teen media. Approximately 37% of articles in leading magazines for teen girls emphasize a focus on physical appearance. This is none to surprising considering two of the top contenders in this media genre are Seventeen and Teen Vogue. CosmoGIRL and Elle Girl were among the ranks of popular teen magazines, but in recent years have become exclusively online publications. Add in a dash of publications Tiger Beat and Bop, and it becomes glaringly obvious that girls are charged with the prime directive of looking good to get the guy. The story becomes more disturbing when the actual audience, which includes girls at least as young as eleven years old, is considered. In a stage when girls are trying for the first time to establish their identities, top selling publications are telling them that their exteriors should be their primary concern of focus. Of course, this trend doesn’t stop with magazines. A study conducted in 1996 found a direct correlation between the “amount of time an adolescent watches soaps, movies and music videos” a...
Research shows “that regular readers of fashion and beauty magazines in early adolescence are more likely to suffer from a distorted body image during their teenage years” (“Children, Adolescents and the Media”), when they read beauty magazines they read articles and tips of how to look better and they try to them all to look and feel better about themselves. Research shows that “more than three-quarters of girls repot that television influenced their body image” (Mascarelli). Social media influences how we act and what we do Amanda Swartz once stated “Social media and mass media influence the way we react and interact with our world and potentially influence the perception of our own body image” (Mulliniks). In today’s worlds there are more ways to access websites to promote body image as a positive thing, “On the internet, there are now more than 100 pro anorexia websites that not only encourage disordered eating but offer specific advice on purging, severely restricting calories intake, and exercising excessively” (“Children, Adolescents and the Media”). It’s not a bad thing to eat healthy and work out to be fit and healthy but it’s another thing to eat less and work out excessively. Teens always compare themselves to others, either their peers, models and celebrities, “People are on Facebook or Instagram and they’re constantly comparing themselves to other people” (Mulliniks). Also reality television shows, show only the glamorous about what is happening, like “when teen moms become celebrities, the message to avoid teen pregnancy is lost” (Kroll). When teens watch shows like Teen Mom they don’t see the entire negative about becoming pregnant as a teen they see that the teen mom got famous and is on the show. Social media, media, magazines, and TV give teen’s unrealistical facts about body image, pregnancy and
The media and how it affects our society has changed tremendously over the past few decades. Our population of children who spend a lot of time in front of the television or on social media continues to increase, creating a superficial view of themselves and who they should be. This superficial outlook has been created by the media because it preaches to our society that looks matter. Not only are there millions of advertisements saying to lose weight and buy certain products to be beautiful, but there has been a specific standard of beauty set for models and actresses to obtain. These standards include big eyes, volumino...
By having cyberbullying grow, people are starting to make new laws and make it a federal crime. It’s a lot harder to get rid of cyberbullying, because there are so many social media sites where it can be found. With just a mean effortless tweet, comment, or message it can be a toll on somebody’s life. Statistics show that “20% of youth ages 11-18 have been victims of cyberbullying.” Most teens do cyberbullying, because they think it’s funny, or they just think that person deserves it, but what teens don’t get is what consequences lie
In a research article by E. Mooney, H. Farley, and C. Strugnell (2009) specific questions were addressed in guiding this study. First, do celebrities and have an influence on young girls? Second, does the media also influence adolescent girls view on body image and what is beautiful? The focus of this investigation was on adolescent females through using a group session to discuss their feelings. It is hypothesized that celebrities do play a dominant role in the majority of the participant’s lives (Mooney et al., 2009, pg. 489). The reasoning behind using a group session as their procedure was that talking to their peers rather than the researcher may have different...
A groom and bride come together, and the bride doesn’t desire to marry this person but she is doing for her parents. This bride and groom are not going to have a successful marriage because the bride is not fully willing to marry this person. This is why love marriage is superior. The couple will have a stronger bond and will have a better understanding with each other. They will also be less likely to have a divorce because they are the ones that decided to fall in love with each other and decided to spend the rest of their lives together. Unlike arranged marriages, love marriages are more prosperous. Love marriages are more successful because they have better understanding of each other, in arranged marriages there most likely abuse each other each other, and they have more natural love.
The media shows women that represent beauty, even if these women are not real. This means the women in magazines that teenagers wish to look like is not authentic. Many teenagers don’t understand the difference of what is real and fake. So, they believe that the ave...
Generations after generations teens have used the actions of bullying to hurt others they felt as a threat or to be in the “in crowd” of popularity. Traditional bullying was physical and thus confined to face-to-face contexts. However, with the development of widespread social interaction via social media websites, email, and text-messaging, teens have additional avenues of expression and, as a result, other means of bullying. Over time the bullying taking place using digital means has come to be known as cyberbullying. Cyberbullying has brought the evilness out of teen’s actions, words, and thoughts whether they were the bully or the victim. Equally important, the ending results of these actions, words and thoughts have brought death, limited yet undefined punishable consequences if pursued, and slowly progressing methods to control cyberbullying as a whole.
Teenage girls are at an impressionable time in their lives. Mass Media is a key idea in one of the factors of socialization that become important to teenagers. Teenagers look to the media for a sense of entertainment. Whether it is movies, magazines, or even some aspects of social media, teenagers get a lot of influence from the media’s message. The problem with this is the media has a specific way of doing things and can be negative to a susceptible teenage girl. Media’s way of portraying a woman can be skewed and unrealistic way from what reality is. Teenage girls then have a desire for this look or way. In this essay the three ways I will describe as to why the media can negatively affect a teenage girls body image is by showing unrealistic bodies and women, women whose bodies are desirable by a mass number of people, and lastly not allowing all body types to be equally shown as “attractive.”
Alexandra Scaturchio, in her article “Women in Media” (2008) describes the media’s idea of beauty as superficial. She supports her argument by placing two pictures side-by-side; a picture of a real, normal-looking woman and her picture after it has been severely digitally enhanced. Her purpose is to show young teenage girls that the models they envy for their looks are not real people, but computer designs. She also states, “the media truly distorts the truth and instills in women this false hope because…they will live their lives never truly attaining this ideal appearance”. Scaturchio wants her readers to realize the media’s distorting capabilities and feel beautiful about themselves, even with flaws.
Each day, the importance of mass media is increasing among society. More people are becoming dependent on the media and are being affected by it unknowingly. “Over the past five years, the time kids spend using media has increased significantly” (Media's Grip on Tweens and Teens). “According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 87 percent of teens with cell phones use them for texting, sending an average of 50 messages a day. It's not just teens; the same study showed that 72 percent of adult cell phone users also text. More and more teens and adults are also using phones to access social media sites like Facebook and Twitter” (Rossiter, M). While the mass media can have a positive effect, it can also have a negative effect on teens. Therefore, teenagers intentionally, or unintentionally, pick up the habits they see in the different mass media. “It would be naïve to believe the media has no effect on teens and tweens” (Media's Grip on Tweens and Teens).
Technology is one of life’s most impressive and incredible phenomena’s. The main reason being the shockingly high degree to which our society uses technology in our everyday lives. It occupies every single realm, affecting people both positively and negatively. There are so many different forms of technology but the two most often used are cell phones, and the internet/computers in general. Today’s younger generation was raised alongside technological development. Kids now a days learn how to operate computers and cell phones at a very early age, whether it be through their own technological possessions, a friend’s, or their parents. They grow up knowing how easily accessible technology is, and the endless amount of ways in which it can be used. This paper will be largely focused on the effects of technology on the younger generation because your childhood is when these effects have the largest impact. I am very aware of the subject because I am the younger generation. Aside from major effects on study and communication skills, there also exist the media’s effects on teen’s self-esteem and mental health. Maybe more importantly, there is our world’s growing problem of over priced and unnecessary consumerism. Over time, our society has created a very unhealthy form of reliance and dependency on technology as a whole. People essentially live through their devices. Cell phones are always with people making it nearly impossible to not be able to reach someone at anytime, day or night. In 2011, there were 2.4 trillion text messages sent, and 28,641 cell phone towers were added across the US. 1 We use our phones and Internet for directions, communication, information, self-diagnosis, games, movies, music, schoolwork, work, photos, shoppi...