Negative Effects of Media on Different Age Groups

Introduction: Media, Age Groups, and Social Division

Picture this: a young teenage girl is in her room, her music turned up as loud as possible as she sings along to the vulgar lyrics and gyrates just like the superstar singer she has seen on television countless times. Her mother, hearing the words from downstairs, rushes up to see her daughter's suggestive moves and immediately turns off the music. An epic fight ensues. This scene is fairly typical — differing only in detail — of every generation of the industrial era, when media became a thing not only accessible to but developed for different and specific age groups.

This specialization has led to better-focused advertising and content with a more obvious and immediate appeal to different sectors of society. However, the differences created by the media often appear to — and very well could in reality — have negative consequences, producing divisiveness in society. The modern age has also brought an expansion of media outlets, adding first widely available print media, then radio, television, and now the enormous and ever-growing Internet. From reporting the news to advertising aimed at getting people to buy things they could never really need, media has become the primary mechanism by which people connect to the world.

This would not necessarily be a bad thing if violence and sexuality were not so prevalent in all types of media. Several prominent social researchers and psychologists have linked violence in the media to increased aggression in society (Jenkins 1999). Research scientist Dr. Jonathon Freedman states the matter quite bluntly: "the physiological effects of media violence cause aggressive behavior. Exposure to violent imagery is linked to increased heart rate, faster respiration, and higher blood pressure. Some think that this simulated 'fight-or-flight' response predisposes people to act aggressively in the real world" (Freedman 2002, p. 158).

Media Violence and Its Effects on Children

Such exposure begins at a much younger age than might be expected. Cartoons are a popular form of media entertainment for children as young as one year of age, and violence is a typical staple of animated television shows. Tom and Jerry's antics would be horribly vicious and inhumane in the real world, yet such cartoons have persisted for generations. New shows are no better; Digimon is a famous Japanese cartoon series and its own consumer franchise that, like its predecessor Pokémon, involves fantastic beings engaged in injurious battles with each other. The line between reality and fiction is blurred at younger ages, and children tend to copy the actions they see in cartoons, including hitting, fighting, shouting, and worse.

The link between media violence and socially detrimental behaviors has been well established by several prominent groups. The American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Psychological Association, American Academy of Family Physicians, and American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry released a joint statement saying in unequivocal terms that media violence has a direct effect on children's behavior (Congressional Public Health Summit, 2000).

The wide range of these effects may include children becoming less interested in school, exhibiting violent and aggressive behavior, spending less time interacting with parents and friends, experiencing increased anxiety and passivity, and becoming more easily bored by cartoons that contain little or no "action" (Congressional Public Health Summit, 2000). Obviously, the behavior that children exhibit is hugely affected by the media they consume, and as they become increasingly desensitized and bored with non-violent media, the problem worsens. Children may turn to more and more violent media to achieve the same level of entertainment, becoming further desensitized and more detached from the rest of the world, until the "action" they have witnessed in the media seems like the only truly worthwhile thing in life.

Adolescents, Identity, and Media Influence

Erik Erikson was an internationally prominent developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory of the social development of human beings. Much of his theory remains intact and is used today, especially regarding the identity crises experienced by young adults in the modern era. According to Erikson, adolescence is the time of life when people attempt to develop identity and ideas about strength, weakness, goals, occupation, sexual identity, and gender roles. To make things more difficult, the teenage body is a raging bundle of hormones that often cause mood swings and other unpredictable behavior. Being a teenager can be a very challenging experience, and constant involvement with and bombardment from various forms of media can make the task more difficult still. Not only does modern media present teenagers with a wide and often confusing array of choices, but it actively attempts to persuade them in various directions.

Teens appear to be especially susceptible to media influence, looking to celebrities for trends in fashion and lifestyle. The media often glorifies these celebrities' unhealthy patterns of drug and alcohol abuse and other reckless behaviors. This is true of celebrities in the music world, in television and film, and in almost every other media outlet for which teenagers constitute the major consumer base. As youth becomes desensitized to formerly outrageous images and circumstances, media has begun to produce ever more violent and sexually charged content, which has caused a great deal of divisiveness in society at large.

For example, when singer Jordan Knight, formerly of the popular New Kids on the Block, released a solo album in 1999, Canadian activists called for a boycott because it included a song advocating date rape. When the controversial rap artist Eminem came to Toronto in 2000, politicians and activists unsuccessfully called for the government to bar him from the country on the grounds that his violent lyrics promoted hatred against women — his song "Kim" graphically depicts him murdering his wife, and "Kill You" describes how he plans to rape and murder his mother. Such violence in popular music is especially insidious, as music has a way of working into the subconscious. The teenagers listening to such lyrics might not even realize the effect it is having on them.