Reality Television and Media Essay

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Does Media Influences the Youth?

Have you ever wondered while looking at media and how it portrays behaviour, sexuality, and body image? Large companies pay huge amounts of money, billions of dollars, on creating spreads, advertisement and commercials to promote their products. There are many forms of media such as movies, music , television, and magazines all fighting to get the attention of consumers. Beautiful models, sexuality, and bad behaviour appeal to the younger crowds who really are the next generation. Little do companies know that they are influencing the youth to do what they see on television, what celebrities sing about, and the image music videos portray making it seem normal to be this way. Teenagers are so eager to be “popular” they allow themselves to be controlled by the media and follow the bandwagon. But not all media is bad and negative. Television shows like Dora the Explorer and Barney are great examples of good influential media because of how they teach their younger viewers. By looking the negative side of the media it will help understand how much the media can affect our society and how we can control from being influenced.

Negative sides of the media that are portrayed are all over songs, television, and magazines. On television, young people can flip through channel by channel to see what catches their attention. Things that could catch their eye may be showing unrealistic body images, poor behaviour, and possibly bad sides to celebrities or their role models.
An excellent example of negative influential shows is the series Jersey Shore. Jersey Shore is an American reality television series where a group of people live in a house and have violent and sexual encounters. The men in Jersey Shore are built with large muscles and tight clothing while the women also wear tight clothing and have sexual appeal. During the show the characters backstab one another, mistreat everyone in the house and in the end like to go drinking at clubs. These actions trick younger audiences into thinking this is okay to behave in public since it is being show in real-life on their television screens. Many teens spend 30 hours a week on 'screen time' during high school (Science Daily). With all that time spent on electronics, the youth are bound to get sucked in to thinking everything they see is real. I am not saying all television shows are all bad, television shows shown on the children’s channel Treehouse have great effects on children. Shows like Dora the Explorer teaches kids how to solve problems while teaching them spanish all at once, while programs like Barney teaches kids their ABC's and 123's. When they see characters on TV educational activities, they will want to participate in those activities. For instance, in Dora the Explorer, Dora communicates with the audience by talking solely to the camera. Dora then asks questions to her audience to help her finish the journey such as riddles and brain teasers or making normal life routines into an educational lesson. Television is a great influential media but music can be one as well.

Music is another great way to communicate with the youth but again, not all music is a great influence on teens and children. Music has the effect to make people move, and song lyrics of those songs can affect the way people think. Good influential music might be about struggles in life and how to get through them or even just about love but bad influential music can sometimes be found in rap. There are stereotypes about rap being the worst when it comes to being a good influence but its true that the majority of rap songs these days are morally terrible. One aspect of rap music is their atrocious language on just about everything. For example, “My Nigga” by Lil Wayne already has an abusive word in its title. The word “nigga” is said 31
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