Mobasseri 1

Tara Mobasseri
Mrs. Dagher
UWRT 1102
10 April 2015
Media: Enemy of the Youth
In todays society, technology has made a significant impact on the way people
communicate and continues to advance rapidly. Although technology, such as television, video
games, etc seems like a great resource to have, there are many disadvantages from using it.
In the past 5 years, I have observed a change occur in the way my family communicates
with one another. We tend to communicate less with each other, which has not implied that we
care less for each other, only that there are other distractions, such as working with other devices,
that we prefer more than to socialize with one another. Recently, I have noticed that while
watching movies as a family, it is very unlikely that everyone watches the movie without
glancing at their phones. While we watch, my father looks at the most recent news on BBC with
his phone, my mother looks at easy ways to cook, and my sisters are either on Instagram,
uploading a picture, or playing games on their phones. Its as if, there is no movie on at all.
Unfortunately, I am guilty of falling into the technology life myself as well. The first thing I do
when I wake up is check all of my social medias and check for updates. The primary concern that
most people have is that we are slowly creating a life online which is fake and worthless, and
detaching ourselves from reality. We tend to find this online life much more interesting, not
knowing that these bad habits are wasting our time, becoming an addiction, bringing violence,
causing teens to have body issues and is also decreasing the interaction people have with one
another.

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While researching, I began focusing on one type of social media, facebook. In an article,
by Arun Vishwanath, there were many facts which supported my argument. Based on the peer
reviewed article, young adults in the U.K. report checking their Facebook feeds 20 times on
average each day and spend upwards of 40 hours each month. (Page# 83) Repeated actions can
often lead to addiction. Addiction to media has a significant impact on an individuals life and it
comes with many side effects. Just a few of the symptoms one can have by being addicted to
media are depression, strained vision, sleep disturbances, and obvious weight gain and loss. In
addition, there are an increasing number of phishing attacks, identity thefts and violence that
happen online every day.
There have been many studies that demonstrate the correlation between violence and the
media. For instance, when I took a psychology class, our professor demonstrated the studies of
the psychologist, Albert Bandura, who conducted the bobo doll experiment. In his laboratory, he
made children witness an adult beating up an inflatable clown on television. Later, the same bobo
doll was put in front of the children and the ones who witnessed the violence were more likely to
show aggression towards the doll. Children who saw a non-violent action from the adults had
less aggression towards the bobo doll (Cherry). Often, parents fail to realize that children are
influenced by what they watch. The major source of violence occurs at home, with all the violent
TV shows and video games kids watch these days. One very popular video game called Grand
Theft Auto is a very realistic game of a man in a gang whose job is to kill people and finish
missions without getting caught by the police. According to Andrea Norcias article Violent
video games and aggressive behavior, the children who play violent games are often pulled into
its realistic world of violent scenes and eventually end up acting out those actions in real life, and
has devastating results. Although there are some games that are used for educational purposes

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and help kids learn, most of the top rated games include violence. In addition, kids end up
playing these games more, and get used to the repetitive actions of killing and seeing blood,
which could potentially cause them to perform those actions as well. The media has a powerful
way of shaping the publics opinion and the way they think and act which brings me to another
good example, The Columbine High School shooting. This shooting was a tragic massacre that
involved two young men named Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold who killed thirteen students, a
teacher and injured twenty-one people before killing themselves in 1999. There was a very
intense debate on whether media influenced these two young men to act this way. The website
psychology career center, explains it this way: both Harris and Klebold played violent murdersimulation video games, and were fans of the controversial movie Natural Born Killers about
a husband and wife pair of mass murderers who received intense media coverage. News reports
said that the boys watched this movie many times and knew the dialogue verbatim (Violence
and Media). This indicates that violence on media effects youth and adults, and could
consequently result them to act in an aggressive manner and use verbal and physical abuse, more
specifically serious crimes.
Technology not only damages one emotionally, but also physically. As stated by the
National Eating Disorders website, Research is increasingly clear that the media does indeed
contribute to people having eating disorders and that exposure to and pressure exerted by media
increase body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. There is a significant amount of pressure on
teens in todays society, which leads them to believe that they are constantly being judged by
people and technology definitely does not help with this situation. Young boys and girls try to
compare themselves with what they see on the media and set unrealistic beauty standards for
themselves to fit in the society. Unfortunately, the media has a powerful way of shaping the

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publics opinion and the way they think and act. As a result, the media should use technology to
send positive messages to people therefore they can become healthier and more fit.
Eating disorders are increasing among teens. Children in the US have the highest rate of
obesity due to spending most of their time watching television or playing video games which
require no physical activity (Jack Kelly).However, some companies have come up with new
ways to fix this problem. There are DVDs and new apps that one can watch and do their daily
exercise with, such as Wii fit. As said on the benefits of wii and wii fit page, Wii is a wireless
motion detector game that picks up on every move including your torso, hands, arms and legs.
Wii challenges obesity by making video gaming an engaging and physical experience rather than
a sedentary one. This is a very good replacement for all of the sit-and play games. Wii motivates
both kids and adults to be more active and most importantly have fun while playing.
In conclusion, despite arguments presented by some people, I believe that the media and
technology around us play a big role in youth violence today. One big solution would be to have
parental guidance and keeping eyes on what their children are watching or doing to solve the
exposure to media by the means of television, video games and especially the Internet. Although
it is important to use the resources around us to gain more information and knowledge, it is also
important to limit and prevent unnecessary information to stop the corruption of the minds of the
youth. Also technology should be used in a beneficial way to have a positive influence on people.

Works Cited

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Boehlke, Julie. "What Are the Health Benefits of Wii & Wii Fit?" LIVESTRONG.COM.
LIVESTRONG.COM, 13 Mar. 2014. Web. 16 Apr. 2015.
Cherry, Kendra. "What Were Albert Bandura's Contributions to the Field of Psychology?" Albert
Bandura Biography (1925- ). About Education, 2014. Web. 08 Dec. 2014.
Hirschhorn, Joel. ""Technology Addiction" in the Electronic Age: Worldwide Progress or
Servitude?" Global Research. 05 Jan. 2013. Web. 10 Apr. 2015.
Kelly, Jack. "TV, Video Games Linked to Obesity." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. N.p., n.d. Web. 15
Apr. 2015.
Media, Body Image, and Eating Disorders | National Eating Disorders Association." Media,
Body Image, and Eating Disorders | National Eating Disorders Association. N.p., n.d.
Web. 18 Apr. 2015
Violent Video Games & Aggressive Behaviors." Violent Video Games. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Apr.
2015
"Violence and Media." Violence in the Media. All Psychology Careers, 2014. Web. 08 Dec. 2014.
Vishwanath, Arun. "Habitual Facebook Use and Its Impact on Getting Deceived on Social
Media." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 20.1 (2015): 83-98.

After Peer-review: Write two paragraphs

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The first paragraph should focus on the feedback you received from your peers. What
were the peer suggestions given to you? How did you incorporate these into your revision
process? What feedback did you decide not to incorporate?
1) Peer review was very helpful because I got to share my essay with my classmates and
ask for their opinion about my paper. The feedback I got helped me make my essay
much more concise and straight to the point rather than wordy and pointless. I had
some problems with my grammar also but thankfully I had someone to revise my
paper and give me comments on where my problems were. I used all of the
suggestions into revision my paper and improve it. After reading my classmates
feedback I realized that my introduction was not the way I was suppose to start it. I
decided to change it up a bit and start with a more personal experience. I decided not
to incorporate with the typical f paragraph essay. I wanted this essay to be in my
words and my thoughts.
The second paragraph should reflect upon the feedback you provided for your
peers. Provide at least three concrete examples.

2) My classmates essay was very interesting and comprehensive. The essay which I
edited had a few grammar problems. Another problem with the essay was that there
were some parts in which had too much explanation.to be more specific, the body
paragraph. Also some of the parts of the test did not match the format of an
exploratory essay