Uploader: The Puppeteers

Jordie Guasch

Period 4

The Puppeteers

Children watch approximately 40,000 commercials a year on their TV or computer. This translates into about 110 commercials a day. Each commercial is filled with different things like new movies or TV shows, ads for companies, and self-improvement items. Teenagers are at the most influential point in their lives and tend to mimic whatever they see on TV, bad or not. The problem with the media nowadays is that they sometimes advertise “negative” behavior such as glamorizing sex, violence, substance abuse, being “perfect”, or other things that set bad examples of how teens feel like they should live their life. The stress of attempting to follow these trendy lifestyles that the media presents can affect not only a teen’s idea of self-worth, but it can be damaging to them later in life.

Teens are constantly trying to improve their appearance to the opposite sex by buying new clothes, trying make up on, or flirting. Magazines and TV commercials are usually what help teenagers decide what’s new and what’s fashionable. However, this just adds a load on teenagers’ shoulders, as it’s another aspect of life that they feel that they have to pay attention to on top of family, school, and friends. According to the Nation Institute of Media and the Family, “One in every three (37%) articles in leading teen girl magazines also included a focus on appearance, and most of the advertisements (50%) used an appeal to beauty to sell their products.” Teen girls are more likely to fall victim to wanting become perfect in the eyes of the opposite sex than boys due to that statistic. However, that doesn’t mean that boys are completely safe from the alluring spell that the media casts. According to the same institution, “In a study on fifth graders, 10 year old girls and boys told researchers they were dissatisfied with their own bodies after watching a music video by Britney Spears or a clip from the TV show "Friends”.” Teenagers set very high bars for themselves these days and they can easily cave if they feel like they aren’t doing enough to achieve their goals.

Sometimes, the stress to be the best can result in eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia. Studies indicate that “…by their first year of college, 4.5 to 18 percent of women and 0.4 percent of men have a history of bulimia and that as many as 1 in 100 females between the ages of 12 and 18 have anorexia. “ Both of these eating disorders are when someone starves them self or when someone throws up all of their food to lose weight. Both disorders can lead to serious problems such as acid erosion to the teeth, an unhealthy obsession to maintain a “healthy” body weight, and self esteem issues. The media’s ability to make teenagers want to be something their not puts so much weight on their shoulders that it’s often unbearable. In some unfortunate cases, teens resort to suicide or accidentally kill themselves because they think that they aren’t attractive enough. It is suggested that eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. “A study by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders reported that 5 – 10% of anorexics die within 10 years after contracting the disease; 18-20% of anorexics will be dead after 20 years and only 30 – 40% ever fully recover.“ There should be no reason for the media to advertise such fake images of people because that just sets an impossible standard in many teenagers’ lives.

Keeping up with appearances is not all to what stresses out teenagers nowadays. The slew of summer box office hits, video games, and TV shows offer a variety of violent scenes and motivation to be “bad.” The National Television Violence Study found that “...nearly 2 out of 3 TV programs contained some violence, averaging about 6 violent acts per hour.” Teenagers are more prone to getting into fights today more than ever because of how the media presents violence. “Incidents of sexual violence and sadism doubled between 1989 and 1999, and the number of graphic depictions increased more than five-fold.” says the Parent Television Council. How this affects teens is that they become less and less attune to human emotions and the void between reality and fantasy stretches out even more. Witnessing repeated violent acts can lead to desensitization and a lack of empathy for human suffering. The media has done such a great job at glamorizing violence that teens also might be tempted into joining gangs or intentionally get into fights to feel the rush of adrenaline that they might feel when they’re watching violent fighting scenes in the movies and in their video games. The pressure to be one of the cool kids from their fantasy worlds often gets teenagers into more trouble than they bargained for.

One more thing that can stem from violence in the media is the urge to abuse all sorts of substances. Teens like to act as if they are someone special or dangerous. By smoking they can act on those feelings. Teenagers are always seeking attention, and the thrill that they receive from breaking the law is enough to get them hooked. The media doesn’t help to bend teens from these temptations because they depict smoking, drinking, or doing drugs as something cool. However, these come with their consequences as well. “40 percent of those who started drinking at age 13 or younger developed alcohol dependence later in life. Ten percent of teens who began drinking after the age of 17 developed dependence,” says Teen Drug Abuse. In many magazines, there are numerous advertisements of alcohol or depictions of people smoking. These are not images that the media should be sending out to the teenagers of the world as it could easily ruin their lives if they fall for the temptation of drugs and alcohol.

Finally, sex is one of the most glamorized things in the media. Teenagers everywhere are engaging in premarital, unprotected sex and run the risk of catching STDS such as AIDS or HIV. Movies like American Pie for example may give teenagers the feeling that they aren’t true “adults” unless they’ve had sex before college. The pressure to be like everyone else in high school is what most often leads to a teenager’s downfall and what causes them to regret their actions later in life. “46% of high school students in the United States have had sexual intercourse. Although sex is common, most sexually active teens wish they had waited longer to have sex, which suggest that sex is occurring before youths are prepared for its consequences. 1 case of an STD is diagnosed for every 4 sexually active teens.” The problem with teenagers having sex early is that if they catch an STD, there is in some cases, no cure for the STD and may result in the death of the teenager when they’re older. Sex in movies may spice up the movie, but the media should put stricter ratings on things like that to prevent the upcoming generation from becoming so corrupted in their journey to adulthood.

The stress to be perfect in this dog eat dog world of teenagers is often filled with a lot of regret and disappointment. The pressure can be too much and may eventually lead to the unnecessary death of a teenager who couldn’t handle all of what was happening in their lives. The media makes their pawns dance themselves to death with stress. The stress to be perfect, to be cool, to be accepted into a society that almost nobody can handle. Grinning their hardest, they leap into the abyss before them. The media will greedily consume all of them baited by the flashing lights and beautiful faces.