Media Influence On Youth Essay

1900 Words8 Pages

The media has long played a role in influencing how people construct and perceive the world. Media has influenced how people construct their thoughts, most often their perception towards someone. Youth in particular, have been presented in a variety of ways in the media. Although teenagers are portrayed differently as an individual, based upon characteristics and personality, the media is constructed to sell certain ideologies of youth or the youth culture in general to the audiences and then to the society. The media promotes both, diversity and conformity when representing the youth culture in the media but in my opinion, conformity reigns superiority. The media promotes conformity in the way youth culture is portrayed. The fact that media like films and TV shows characterize youth as conformity, it reinforces values and ideological hegemony to the audience, thus constructing their knowledge and view of youths. In …show more content…

“One may remember or forget these messages but briefly one takes them in, and for a moment they stimulate the imagination by way of either memory or expectation.” (Berger, 1977) as a result, teenagers are often depicted as lazy, rude, antisocial, violent, naïve, wild, irresponsible and mischief conductors by the society in real life because these particular images of youth have been constructed in their minds by the media. Films and TV shows that involves youths as the main characters, regularly promotes conformity. There are media effects that affect youths and the society based on the message and ideology sent in films and TV shows, this will be elaborated later on in my essay. The first series of the television show Skins (2007), adequately represents teenagers’ life, it is about the life story of a group of high school friends, where in each episodes, we