How the Media Influences Teen’s Brains

As an eighteen-year-old lies on the couch watching “Keeping up with The Kardashians”, she quietly observes every movement they make. Afterwards, she slowly walks to the bathroom, turns to the mirror, and looks at herself from head to toe. Her self-esteem instantly drops in just a matter of seconds. This is a perfect example of how the media impacts adolescents’ lives. According to a survey done by Dr. Jennifer Hartstein, “78% feel that gossip is normal vs. 54% of the girls who do not watch. 74% of the girls who watch reality TV believe that their appearance is of the uttermost importance, as compared with 42% of the girls who don’t watch” (Hartstein 1). Adolescents are bombard with the ideal image the media sends them through magazines, television, music, video games, advertisement, and much more. The adolescents’ mentality changes, and they instantly criticize themselves because they feel that they do not reach society’s expectations. The media is misleading and influencing the wrong ideas into the minds of teenagers, which greatly affects their self-esteem.

The media’s tactic of presenting a preferred image or lifestyle to teenagers is basically brainwashing them to believe and feel like they should look a certain way to be accepted into society. The media is an expert in changing the way you think, look, and feel. Adolescents look up to celebrities, models, and other “heroes”, which play a big part in their scheme, and the reason being is that the media wants a model figure that would make the audience agree to what they embody completely. For instance, “69% of girls in one study said that magazine models influence their idea of a perfect body shape” (“Crisis Connection”, 1) Rather, adolescents should consider looking up to strong role models that fight for what they believe in. If the media were to expose them more on the downside of television, they would most likely look up to infamous celebrities that don’t show an inspiring image.
Teenagers should stop having this stereotypical mindset that the media puts upon everybody. For instance, the cliché idea of having a perfect body is that being skinny is “the body to be” and being “heavy” isn’t. The media influences adolescents with its appearance, and adolescents begin to believe that they must appear a certain way to be “perfect”. As teens grow, they obtain an odd understanding of what society is requiring from them, and this encourages them to make changes to their bodies all because of a shallow goal of reaching the high expectations of the media. In a recent survey by Teen People magazine, “27% of the girls felt that the media pressures them to have a perfect body” (“Crisis Connection”, 1). Thus, adolescents feel pressured to do anything to look better. Females and males are believed to feel satisfied with themselves when they look good however, feeling good comes within an adolescents self, and by accepting whom they are.
Many assume that teenage females are the only ones with body or weight issues however; teenage males are also watchful and insecure about their appearance. Just like females, males are also conscious of how the public sees them. Moreover, men are more private on what they feel and think about themselves as compared to women. “The more media these young men “consumed”- especially music videos and prime-time TV- the worse they felt about those “real” aspects of their bodies, the researchers found” (Schooler 1). Males are also affected by thinking of super-hero ideals and feel forced to live up to that as well. Everything in an adolescents’ point of view is embedded in their minds and they feel pressured because of what they need to do in order for society to accept them, which is completely false. “For boys and men. Engaging with these media images is more of a choice,” says Deborah Tolman of the center for research on Gender and Sexuality in San Francisco.” (Schooler, 1) For the most part, males are criticized and tormented with high expectations as well just not as much as females are.
The media has manipulated our reality into a world of fake dreams and ridiculous matters through music, music videos, video games, advertising, magazines, and much more. There are many ways the media tries to grab a teenager’s attention and one major attention grabber is specially made through television. Females are being exposed on television as well as men making teenagers feel worse about themselves after watching. “In a 1992 study of female students at Stanford University, 70% of women reported feeling worse about themselves and their bodies after looking at magazines. Roughly 50% of teen girls in the U.S. read teen or adult fashion magazines.”(Body Wars, “Crisis Connection”,1) Influencing the wrong ideas into the minds, teenagers are being fooled by the media to buy into an unhealthy lifestyle scheme. The media’s tactic of presenting a preferred image or lifestyle to teenagers is fooling people to “buy” into this “luxurious” life, which at the end of the day means more money. Mary a producer from MTV shows jokingly suggests “If nobody were watching the shows or buying the products that advertised on the, they wouldn’t succeed. “We’re not Little House on the Prairie anymore,” she says. “The world is different. If parents said, “You can’t watch this,’ and the ratings dropped, maybe we would change things.” (Luscombre, 1) The media relies on television viewers but rely on teenagers the most because they buy into anything they hear, consequently, media influences can have many devastating consequences that can affect teenagers.
Ironically, many believe that the media’s role in society is to teach right from wrong, yet, in reality society cause corruption in teenage minds that may lead to rigorous consequences. For this reason, adolescents may be pressured by the message the media is trying to give them. All this may lead to low self-esteem, depression, adolescents wanting to get plastic surgery, eating disorders, and suicidal thoughts. Generally speaking, “Girls are becoming weight conscious as young as 8 year old, 80% of 9 year olds are on diets and, eating disorders have grown 400% since 1970.” (“Crisis Connection”, 1) The media is ignorant knowing teenagers are affected by all this but decide not to stop sending these messages or else the media will not receive any profit because it is part of a world wide business. With that being said parents are not excluded from saving their children, in other words, parents can also reduce the effects on media influence.
Parents might view criticism as a normal phase in an adolescent’s life, yet, parents are essential to boosting their child’s confidence many ways. Monitoring the programs, films, television, music videos, magazines, as well as the music teens listen to can reduce the risky consequences the media leads to. Adolescents may deny it but reality is they see their parents as role models. The world the media is making teenagers visualize is that teens are now based on looks and quantity of a person not quality. “As teens get older they tend to be curious about the outside world and encounter sexual behavior or sexual trends. Parents are advised to explain rather important information to teens instead of having them obtain the wrong ideas from other peers.” (“Forever Families”, 1)

As a whole, yes, the media is entertaining and it gives us abundant information about certain things but showing indecent images such as models exposing their bodies, or having an ideal and promiscuous lifestyle is beyond reality. Such things as these can cause depression leading to suicide. Teenagers are in a point in their life where they want to fit in and drastic measures will be taken in order to do so. The media releases a sense of perfection that needs to be met by everyone else and those who do not have strong self – esteem may fall into their trap.