How the Media Influences Our Society

The media has always been an extremely influential way of entertainment in our everyday lives. Most people can name a few celebrities they look up to as role models. Looking at each of the respected celebrities it’s easy to name off at least five facts about them. With that said, it’s very easy to indicate that the media has a great impact on our society. An obvious way to see this is to look at the violence in our communities. Review especially our crime dealing with the minors of this country. Granted, not all of the youths’ crime resulted from the media. But here’s the point I want to make: violent entertainment has lead to an increase in violent crimes.

The media reaches society in a number of different ways. Video games, television shows, and movies are the more appealing forms of entertainment our society views. People of all ages like to watch violent movies and shows, and they like to play the more gory video games. However, we need to explore and realize exactly how much this media has impacted our young society. Some people viewing this violent media, especially the younger generation, want to be more like the characters they see because how they’re acting looks exciting. People want to imitate their favorite characters which leads to aggressive behavior. A familiar series of video games named of Call of Duty is extremely popular among many teenagers and possibly the most recent well known video game. Some teens will waste as many as 5-8 hours in a single day playing these games. However, on the back of each video game is the content rating and an explanation for its reasoning. This particular series is intended for mature audiences 17 years and older because of blood, gore, intense violence, and strong language. Altho...

... middle of paper ...

... were inspired by the murderous Dexter Morgan from Dexter. Everyone can point out that something needs to be done to prevent these crimes by somehow blocking these television shows, movies, and video games. However, authorities cannot physically stop every single person who wishes to watch a violent show or play a gory video game. There are already limitations in place such as being a certain age to watch an R-rated movie in theaters, blocking certain ages from buying certain games, and making television owners pay even more money for the more violent television shows. Although this limits the amount of violence seen by some people, it does not stop the significant amount of people who do view these. Along with many other people, I do not know what else to do to stop this violence in our society. To find some of it results from the media is not all that surprising.