It's quite scary to think about how much the media can influence a person. The media is meant to entertain, inform, even to persuade, but I find that it also has the power to control minds. Of course it only has as much power as a person gives willingly, but with that power our generation has been molded into exactly what "they" want.
So many things that we as teenagers do, say, think, wear, etc come straight from what we see and hear from the media. Fashion, and it's importance to be apart of the "in" crowd. Immorality, and sex appeal. The use a drugs and consumption of alcohol. The media not only encourages these things, but they condemn those who don't by labeling these individual thinkers as "nerds", "prude", "ugly". My generation, more then any other is plagued by our upbringing in the media's world. From birth we have been raised to obey popularity and trend.
Aside from the media's control over what we buy, wear, and how we socialize, it also has control over how we think and feel. It's a subtle type of mind control that is rarely noticed. Ever watch a tv show, or movie about a dancer, singer, athlete, etc and then as soon as it's over you want to go try your hand at it? I know I have. I've experienced urges to be a cheerleader after movies like Bring It On, and to dance after the final scene of Center Stage. Sure things like this seem like fun little quirks, but what about when the things we see on tv and hear in music effect the way we feel. How when your really angry you pop in your favorite screamo cd, or when your sad sappy country music just seems to fit. The type of music we turn to no longer remedies our emotions, it only fuels the fire.
Tonight I went to see a great little film called Becoming Jane. It tells the story of the great English writer Jane Austen. It's a love story of course, a sappy chick flick, and yet I'm left with feelings of sadness, and loneliness, and it's not because I really felt bad for the character. Watching her life only makes me think about mine. (I'm a selfish person, oh well) Her love story brings sadness to mind when I think about my love story and how empty it is. I know it's childish and stupid to care about such things or to let a silly movie effect my emotions so much as to make my whole night a downer, but *sigh* that's what happened.
How can I allow movies, tv, music, news, the media in general effect me so deeply. To change my emotions on a whim? I've surrendered all individual thought over and I'm left with what they give me. It's sad really. I would like to think that my knowledge of the powers of media would help me to protect myself against it. But that did me no good tonight. I hope I'll be stronger in the future, but things aren't looking up.
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Your take on the influence of media is interesting because most of the studies coming out now about your generation refer to ya'll being "media savvy."
What that means is that you inherently know that everybody in the media has an agenda...like you know CNN will have a liberal slant and FOXnews a conservative one. And because of that, everything becomes sort of murky and this doesn't cause anything but doubt of the source. Hence, as a group, you don't accept or trust much media.
However, where the media does influence your generation, as you noted, was in what was "cool" or not. So, advertising has become a vehicle to show how "cool" your product is. Think of the iPod commercials: They don't tell you anything about the benefits of the product or cost or sales or anything like that. They just play cool music, therefore they must be a cool product. So...everybody goes to get one. Same for cars. Note the type of commercials for folks who are old enough to have incomes to buy high end cars and compare them to first-time buyer (just out of college) ads for cars. The younger set gets to see how cool their little car will be.
It is interesting to me how movies, sporting events, books, music, etc. can fuel our emotions. It seems to bring out what's already inside and sometimes that scares me when I see things in myself I don't like (for example, anger at a college kid for dropping a football in a big game).
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