Media‘s effects on young people‘s minds

 If we check the meaning of media Mr. Vocabulary J explains that the sphere of media includes: TV, radio, press (newspapers and magazines) and the internet.  I will further discuss these forms of media in order to make a statement about the various effects of media on the minds of contemporary youth.

Nowadays the role of TV is more of an entertainer, than a source of information. Because most people seek information using the world wide web.

Young people are mostly influenced by the visual images shown on TV. Different kind of TV shows, movies, commercials, videoclips dictates  us  what the socially accepted idea of beauty is. Commercials advertise different kinds of products or services as a necessity, even if we don‘t need it. The message of advertisements is that people have to buy and  consume more in order to look nice, rich, succesfull and to be accepted in our society. As a negative result of such influence there are: eating disorders, plastic surgery and even workoholism .

TV can also have a positive effect. For example, we can watch sports like baskteball, football, etc on TV. Through this, TV promotes a healthy way of life. Another example is Christmas charity events are shown on TV and give us an idea what sharing with each other trully is.

Radio is not so important nowadays as it was before. Naturally some exceptions can be found. We can find radio stations that play popular songs, like the top 10  and there are a small part of people who still tend to listen to the radio on their way to school, work, or on various other ocassions. It is free of charge and if it plays nice music, why not listen to it? But of course, we still can‘t avoid all those irritating commercials.

Press or printing as well lost their importance against new technologies. Still,  there are small part of young people that buy magazines every month. The various information in the most popular magazines influences us in a similar way as TV through the images. The difference is that these images are still, silent and on paper.

Which form of media influences us the most?  TV, radio, press or the internet? It took our group few weeks to come to a conclusion. Youth in Lithuania is mostly influenced by TV and the internet. Research has shown that we spend the biggest part of our day killing time in various social networks or simply googling around. Positive parts are: that information is easier to reach, it helps to communicate, it saves time and money, but on another hand, it brings addiction to social networks or video games. The most important to understand how media effects us, to be able to choose and decide and we have made our choice, we have chosen reality instead of virtual life!