Media's effect on teenage girls

This week I have been flip-flopping a lot, just like many of you, on which theory best describes my views on media. I believe that media, whether it is television, the Internet, or another source, does affect most people. Seeing someone brutally raped or murdered will make most people cringe to some degree. Yet, how could they not get used to seeing violence and sex on T.V. all the time when almost every channel at 8 p.m. has a program on with that subject matter - unless you're me. I have never been able to watch anything violent or scary. I take it all in and feel so sad that such negatively and hatred exists. I am not burying my head in the sand by not watching, I just choose to focus on more positive influences.
But the Media Effects theory is too simplified. Watching television does not alone make someone violent immediately or over a period of time, as the Cultivation theory suggests.



That said, the media does have an impact on lives of teenage girls, according to Leonard Sax, author of Girls on the Edge. Maclean's featured an article with Sax this week that caught my attention and I thought it was relevant to our discussion about the effects of media on our lives.
"Inside the dangerously empty lives of teenage girls" is about how teenage girls may look like they have it all together on the outside with high test scores and success in sports, but on the inside they are drowning in insecurities and the inability to deal with life's challenges in healthy ways. I think this has been a common issue for many girls of past generations. What is not helping the matter, says Sax, are media like Facebook and cellphones, where girls are constantly marketing their social status (Sax, 2010).

I think media environments are "playing a leading role in human affairs" (Media Ecology Association). Media is causing not only teenagers but the general population a heightened feeling of stress and anxiety that possibly did not exist prior to this 24-hour plugged in era.

{photo found here}