Media And Its Effects on Children

In today’s society, most people operate through their technological gadgets and with media and the internet just at our fingertips, it’s no surprise things can go wrong. Often times they forget about the world itself because they are so engaged in a screen of a TV, cellphone, or a laptop. This especially applies to young people of today’s modern society. Media and screen culture has a negative influence on the development of children. It can be crucial in terms of the behavioral and psychological changes a child goes through such as considering suicide, aggressive behavior, sex, substance abuse, and disorderly eating amongst other things.
With suicide being the third leading cause of death among teenagers, you start to question how that came to be. It turns out that with the increased number of movies, TV shows, and news reports that show suicide; there is a correlation between suicides in teenagers. In a journal from the American Behavioral Science called Media Contagion and Suicide Among the Young, charts shows the relationship between movies showing suicide and actual suicide for the young. One chart shows a rapid increase of movies showing suicide from 1953-1997. While the other chart shows the correlation between actuality and movies in people under age 25. It clearly shows a constant increase of every time the suicidal movie rates went up, so did the rate of young in reality (Gould 1276). Reports have shown that after a TV show “Death of a Student” aired in West Germany, there were great increases of suicide. There was about 17% of self-poisoning incidents the following week it aired and about 20% of youth say the show had influenced their decision to try overdose as a method of suicide (Gould 1272).
In addition to the number of teenage suicides influenced by media, teenagers can also provoke suicide through social media. About 20% of high school students have reported being a victim to cyber bullying. In some schools, Principals don't take this crime very seriously because it doesn't physically harm the students. Little do they know that old "words won't hurt" saying is completely obsolete in today's world. With the use of social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram bullying has been taken to another level. About 11% of teenagers have confessed to having a degrading picture of themselves posted on a social network. Out of that 11%, 7% have admitted to "sexting". Both the media and social media can have an influence on considering suicide. The purpose of those social site does glorify the freedom of expression, but it doesn't make it okay to exploit another person for their own personal fulfillment.
When kids talk about their favorite rappers or singers being their idol, the first names you hear are Beyonce or Taylor Swift. On the other hand, some kids prefer artist like Nicki Minaj, Kanye West, Rihanna, or even Lil Wayne. Not exactly the Brady Bunch right? Well, when kids see their artist music or just everyday behavior, they make seem it ok to do bad things. Bad things such as exposing excessive amounts of sexual or violent behavior also glorifying drugs and alcohol. When the famous lyric “Popped a molly I’m sweatin’” came out, indeed the teens crazed over the new popular drug. According to John Hopkins pediatric resident Elizabeth Tucker, “1 percent of elementary school children and 51 percent of 12th graders have tried alcohol – the leading cause of death among adolescents – and 20 percent of 8th graders have tried tobacco, a leading cause of morbidity and mortality among adults” (1). That just tells you how a mass number of children have tried a substance, but not necessarily been influenced by the media. Though with a comparison to the number of “TV drinking scenes, 33 percent are humorous and involve attractive, successful or influential characters” (Tucker 1).
The idea TV shows are portraying is that it’s fun to get drunk because most of the time