The Negative Impacts Of Mass Media

Over the years, technologies have been gradually advancing and have played an important role in today’s fast growing societies. It has become a major factor in the society as people are depending on it to accomplish specific tasks. For example, schools are using these technologies as an alternative way of teaching students. Business industries are using it to increase business efficiencies. Among all of the technologies, the one that has the most important aspect in people’s lives is the mass media. In general, the mass media simply means medium that gives out information. It consists of televisions, radios, newspapers and the internet. The societies rely on mass media for information, entertainments and even communications. People

These impacts affect the way people make decisions and also their views on certain things. A common media that every urban person has at home is the television. People depend on the television to watch their favorite television shows, dramas and even the news. Some of these television shows and dramas have a negative impact on people. For instance, shows like Nikita and Criminal Minds contain violence and sexual contents. When violence and sexual contents are promoted through these shows, people will have the idea that it is normal to behave violently and aggressively and tend to replicate the same acts that are being exposed to them in real life. Various experiments shows that people, especially children and youths who are exposed to violent shows or movies have a higher chance of behaving aggressively (Huesmann & Taylor, 2006). Other than television shows and dramas, some advertisements also post negative impact on the audiences, especially advertisements pertaining to health products. Some of these advertisements use popular celebrities to promote their product so as to brainwash the audience on the effectiveness of the product. It gives out limited information about the products which leads to people having the wrong views of it. The prescription of drugs have different side effects on everyone and sometimes it doesn’t have any at all (Kramer, 2003). These advertisements

As what was mentioned on the three paragraphs above, researches have shown that television changes people’s behavior and how it able to propagandized the society through advertisements. Just like the television, the social media poses negative threats to the society such as cyber-bulling and how it shapes ones idea to have suicidal thoughts and making them believe that suicide is the only way to resolve problems. The radio also plays an important role in shaping the people’s idea. As radios don’t have visual contents, it all depends on how attentive the people are towards the radio as the lack of attentiveness may lead to the wrong information and audience may have different views or ideas about certain things. The researches given in this essay are evidence to show that mass media plays an important role in people’s life and how it able shapes the people’s idea. More research needs to be done to show that there are other factors other than what was mentioned above that could shape ones idea. However, other people may have different opinions about it. I would conclude that even though mass media can influent people’s idea, it all depends on how an individual uses these mediums to shape their