Media puts a large influence on
the lives of adolescences every day, but more specifically, reality television
shows. Are these influences positive or negative? Personally I believe that
they can be positive in some circumstances but overall I feel they have a
negative influence on the younger population of boys and girls anywhere where
reality television is accessible. It creates unrealistic expectations, it gives
a false perception and it creates poor decision making skills in teens. I can’t
say that these things are positive.
Firstly, reality TV gives unrealistic
expectations to younger viewers. It can make you believe that there’s less
responsibility when it comes to life, take jersey shore for example, they all
get jobs when they are put on the shore and when they have their jobs they
hardly go, they get drunk or sleep on the job, they have other people take
their shifts so that they can do questionable things instead of work. This can
make people believe that this is normal when it comes to having a summer job.
Just because everyone else is having fun it doesn’t mean that you can be
unprofessional and irresponsible during your job. This is how you get fired.
This is a convention in reality TV and it is a very negative force in our
modern day pop culture.
It also gives off a false
perception on life. It leads people to believe things about life that may not
be true. Take man vs. wild for example, people watching that show may think
that living out in the forest would be easy but trying to do what he does could
land you in some serious trouble; you could poison yourself or develop an
infection. You’d need to have the specific knowledge to duplicate the actions
he takes.
Finally, it creates bad decisions.
Teens are very impressionable and watching TV can really lead them to make some
bad decisions. 16 and pregnant is a great example and I know that can be a
touchy subject but being young a pregnant is not a good decision unless you are
100% prepared for the responsibility of a child and most of these girls on the
show are not and being unemployed and still living with your mother are
terrible conditions for a new born.
Except for the fact that the mother is there to help but that isn’t necessarily
fair to her. But let’s not talk about just girls because boys can be just as
impressionable if not more impressionable, Watching shows like jackass or nitro
circus can lead to some extremely dangerous situations. Kids watching these
kinds of shows may think that this kind of stuff is fun and may try it getting them
seriously hurt or arrested. People on TV are on TV for a reason and this isn’t stuff
you do outside of TV.
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