Mass Media Influence

In the last 50 years the media influence has grown exponentially with the advance of technology, first
there was the telegraph, then the radio, the newspaper, magazines, television and now the internet.

We live in a society that depends on information and communication to keep moving in the right
direction and do our daily activities like work, entertainment, health care, education, personal
relationships, traveling and anything else that we have to do.

A common person in the city usually wakes up checks the tv news or newspaper, goes to work, makes
a few phone calls, eats with their family when possible and makes his decisions based on the
information that he has either from their co workers, news, tv, friends, family, financial reports, etc.

What we need to be aware is that most of our decisions, beliefs and values are based on what we
know for a fact, our assumptions and our own experience. In our work we usually know what we have
to do based on our experience and studies, however on our daily lives we rely on the media to get the
current news and facts about what is important and what we should be aware of.

We have put our trust on the media as an authority to give us news, entertainment and education.
However, the influence of mass media on our kids, teenagers and society is so big that we should
know how it really works.

How mass Media Influence works

Of all the media distribution channels the most influential has been the television, we are constantly
exposed to thousands of images of violence, advertising, sex, celebrities and much more, in fact a its
known that a child is exposed to about 40,000 ads a year.

But who owns the media, which are the companies or people that shape our values, beliefs and
decisions? The media is basically dominated by five major companies they are:

• Time Warner
• VIACOM
• Vivendi Universal
• Walt Disney
• News Corp
Those 5 companies own 95% of all the media that we get every day. They own the major
entertainment theme parks, entertainment movie studios, television and radio broadcast networks and
programing, video news and sports entertainment.
They also own integrated telecommunications, wireless phones, video games softwares, electronic
media, the music industry and more.

Years ago there was more diversity in companies, but they have merged so now they are just a few
and they have the power to shape the opinion and beliefs of us and our kids. So its important to be
aware of what your kids are exposed to every day and you should also try to look at things from
different perspectives and not just from the one the media gives you.

Gods of Entertainment: The Power of Mass Media to Influence

How does mass media influence young people?
The media makes billions of dollars with the advertising they sell and that we are exposed to. We buy
what we are told to be good, after seeing thousands of advertisings we make our buying decisions
based on what we saw on Tv, newspapers or magazines to be a product we can trust and also based
on what everyone else that we know is buying and their decision are also base don the media.
These are the effects of mass media in teenagers, they buy what they see on Tv, what their favorite
celebrity advertise and what is acceptable by society based on the fashion that the media has imposed
them.

There are some positive and negative influences in young people.

Here is a positive influence example, if there is a sport that is getting a lot of attention by the media
and gains popularity among your friends and society, you will more likely want to practice the sport
and be cool with all your friends. The result is that you will have fun with your friends and be more
healthy because of the exercise your are doing.

However a negative influence in teenagers is the use of cigars by celebrity movie stars, the constant
exposure of sex images, the excessive images of violence and exposure to thousands of junk food
ads.

Young people are in a stage of life where they want to be accepted by their peers, they want to be
loved and be successful. The media creates the ideal image of a beautiful men and women and tells
you what are the characteristics of a successful person, you can see it in movies and tv. Its a
subliminal way to tell you that if you are not like them you are not cool yet so its time to buy the stuff
they buy and look like they look.

Another negative influence in teenagers that has grown over the last years are anorexia and obesity.
There are millions of adolescents fighting obesity, but at the same time they are exposed to thousands
of advertisements of junk food, while the ideas image of a successful person is told to be thin and
wealthy.

Also more women are obsessive with losing weight even when they are not obese, there are many
thin women that want to look like the super models and thin celebrities so they engage in eating
disorders which leads to severe health issues and even death.

How Subliminal Advertising Tries To Make You Fat

Effects of violence in the Media
When we watch Tv or a movie we usually see many images of violence and people hurting others.
The problem with this is that it can become traumatic especially in our children as we see it more and
more. Our kids that are starting to grow and are shaping their personality values and beliefs can
become aggressive or they can lose a sense of reality and fiction of what they are seeing.

In the past years there have been some cases of kids carrying a gun at school and even hurting others
with it. Those kids have been linked to excessive use of violent video games and war images.

Another problem is that real war is used as a form of entertainment by the media, we should make our
kids and teen aware that war is not a form of entertainment and that there is no win or lose like in
video games, in real war everyone lose.

How media influence public opinion

As i have said above, the media has a huge impact on society and also in public opinion. They can
shape the public opinion in different ways depending of what is the objective.

For example, after the attacks of 911 the media gave a huge coverage of the event and exposed
Osama guilty for the attack as they were told by the authorities. This shaped the public opinion to
support the war on terrorism, the same happened with the war on Iraq. The problem is that if media
received un accurate information then the public opinion supported a wrong cause, this is the power of
public opinion influence.
Other ways to influence are with polls and trends, especially in political campaigns. The candidates
that can pay for more tv and media exposure have more influence on public opinion and thus can
receive more votes.

Love at first sight

Do you believe in love at first sight? Scientists study our brain activity and say that it’s quiet possible
but everyone is free to believe or not to believe.

Some people claim that it happened to them and it was like you raise your head, meet those eyes and
tell yourself “It is He/She!”. Psychologists say that love at first sight depends on our psychological state
at the moment. In some case we won’t even notice those charming eyes in another they can make a
lasting impression on as. Also they say that it takes about 30 seconds to fall in love or precisely
speaking to estimate whether the person is worth to fall in love with. By the way psychologists claim
that men fall in love first.

Very many factors act in the situation of falling in love from the first sight. These are our ideals,
intuition or “fast logic”, imagination etc. When you fall in love at the first sight you are usually ready and
willing to fall in love. Less possibility that it will happen if you are tired, stressed, solving problems in
you mind. Of cause the main part in falling in love is given to the appearance, voice, gestures, smell.
One person intuitively searches in the other the qualities and the feature to complete him/herself. Of
causes beautiful people attract attention the most, but sometimes it’s wrong to fall in love with them
easily because those people are experiencing much attention from the people of the other sex all the
time and your delightful reaction may simply have no answers.

But if you suddenly fall in love with quiet unknown person and see that it’s mutual that may mean even
that mother-nature has chosen a partner that genetically suits you a lot. In this case it is like “aha,
match!” when someone happens to fill up all the necessary categories like “tall, blond, blue-eyed,
looks good, has a style and nice manners, likes me”.

Still the cases when people really had fallen in love from the first sight and lived long and happily after
that are rather it. You may dream of a beautiful stranger that waits for you just around the corner but
it’s wrong to name every slight sympathy and interest to a person the love at first sight. Maybe you’re
just a little tired of everything that surrounds you or trying to fill the emptiness inside, yet it doesn’t
mean everyone who looks nice will do. Sometimes it takes patience and time to find out the true
nature of your feelings, mind that wonders do happen but not as often as we would like them too. If
you suddenly have felt the wings behind you back still try to keep your feet on the ground because if
it’s really love at first sight nothing will happen to it but if you’re taking illusions for reality falling back
on the ground can be really hurtful.

By the way some theories say that we fall in love not from the first sight but from the first smell.
Scientist claim that we pay much attention to what our eyes and ears tell us but on the subconscious
level the way the person smells play a very big part in his or her expression on us although we don’t
recognize it.

As always there’re as many opinions as many people. Each one has an equal right to exist because
whatever the all those scientifical researches find out love still stays a sphere in which no one quiet
sure in anything.