TEENS AND THE MEDIA: ALWAYS ALTERING EACH OTHER

When someone brings up a question about teens' influences on media and media's influence on teens, my mind exploads with thoughts. On this posts, I will let my brain burst and share my position about this with you. I hope you enjoy and I hope you are able to form your own opinions on this topic!

 

 

 

There is a constant cycle. The media (such as tv shows) influence the acts of teens and those acts effect what is popular on the market and in advertising. Then the cycle begins again and everything shifts. This is a non-stop thing. It is happening all around us even when we do not realize it.

Now lets go back to the beginning of the cycle..............It all starts out with the media. The media shows something on television or on a website and all it takes is one teen. One teen looks at that picture,show, or quote of (or by) a certain person and instantly likes the idea because they see their role models (actors,singer,athletes,ect.) trying it. Whether it may be trying a new sport like soccer or partaking in a bad activity like smoking, they suddenly really want to do it."Pop cultural figures as P. Diddy, Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez create intangible brands that help establish these 'norms'" says Tiesha Hood from Discourse magazine. Then, that teens goes off and starts telling all their friends that this star was doing this or that. Then they tell their friends. And suddenly the whole school or even town knows that someone important or "cool" was doing a certain activity.

Well, I beliveve that when the whole town knows, they are all going to want to begin trying this new activity to be like their role model. Soon the whole town will be learning to play hockey, or skateboard, or even take drugs. Now, other towns will see the same show or picture and soon they will try too! Before you know it, this activity will be popular world-wide!

From here, the teens begin to effect the market/advertisments. Once companies see that most of the population is doing this event, they will try to make products to go along with the "in thing". For example, if knitting suddenly became popular, authors would begin to tie knittting into their books  or make how-to knitting books. Toy companies would begin to make cool needles and threads. Jewlary and accessorie stores would make more knitting scarfs, bracelets, hairbands, ect. Clothing stores would sell knitted sweaters or hats. These knitting supplies and clothes would become the majority of advertisments throughout the media.Other things would no longer be popular or shown on tv. Every second commercial would be about this or that knitting supply. The world would then revolve around knitting because of the few teens that saw the show with a star knitting.


And then suddenly, a new show/picture comes out with a new activity in it and the whole world would no longer care about the last activity. The ads,teens,stores,ect. would all have to change their products and lifesytles to do with the new popular activity! And somehow the last popular thing is no longer even remembered.


Now this is the cycle that I believe always seems to be happening. I challenge all of you to break away from the flow and only do something if you enjoy it, not because you see a celebrity doing it. I also suggest taking a minute to think about how the media has effected you in the past and how much you truly want the media to control what you do or how you act or what you wear or how you see yourself.


Camille <3