Mass Media and the Impact of Violent Imagery on Teens Essay

Mass Media and the Impact of Violent Imagery on Teens - Essay ExampleWithin this context, one must learn to promise media as more than just entertainment. It is also a library, a channel of communication and a means of self-betterment. In other words, teenagers must be head toward a better understanding of mass media specifically because its function in society is subjective and undefined. Teenagers who are guided toward a broad utilitarian meet of the media are more apt to use it responsibly and are less likely to exhibit negative behavior than those who are exposed indiscriminately to fierce video games, programmes and films. Those who criticise the culture of strength that unquestionably proceeds from films, television, the Internet and video games have quite successfully leveraged the impressionable vulnerability of youth. However, this ideological position, which is nowadays widely accepted, underestimates the capacity of teenagers for independent thought and reason. The sy stematic derision of childrens resistant capacities can be seen as part of a broader conservative get a line to position the more contemporary and challenging aspects of the mass media, rather than other affable factors, as the major threat to social stability today (Gerbner 1993, p. 139). This trend to emphasize the negative end of the spectrum, which is apparently enhanced every time a young person perpetrates an act of violence, is the rallying cry of interest groups and politicians seek to prove a point. These factions have benefited from the published opinions of scholars and theorists who warn against the terrible residual effect of violence in the media on young people. George Gerbner, a communications professor, and social scientist, wrote that while there have been bloodier eras in human history, none have been so filled with violent imagery as the present We are afloat(predicate) in a tide of violent representations the population has never seen. There is no escape fr om the massive invasion of colorful mayhem into the homes and cultural keep of ever larger areas of the world (Gerbner 1993, p. 139). Gerbner and others associate violence with power, the acquisition of which is of keen interest to people of all ages. For teenagers, exercising power in the virtual world of video games is an elaboration of personal power that is otherwise beyond the reach of young people. Gerbner argues that violent behavior among young people should be studied from the viewpoint of the cradle-to-grave violent imagery with which young people are bombarded. It is not perceived, isolated causes of violent acts that should be considered, Gerbner claims, but other less apparent factors to which pervasive media violence has contributed. He holds that the uniquely modern phenomenon of media-produced violence has engendered unconscious, deeply rooted feelings of vulnerability and personal insecurity and that it is this, more than anything, that produces aggressive and vio lent behavior in teenagers (Gerbner 1993, p. 139).