The Negative Aspects of Multi Media
Katie McMullin
Breckinridge School of Nursing

The Negative Aspects of Social Media
The influence of media on children today is profound. Today’s society is dependent upon multimedia daily. Media comes in many forms such as television, internet, video games and music videos. It effects children in many ways and has been known to cause depression, aggression, isolation and nutrition deficiency. Advertisements influence how our children preserve themselves and make them susceptible to alcohol, smoking and sex. The negative aspects of multimedia have left our children without the proper tools to live life without electronics. This leaves our youth not having the skills to communicate face to face without Discomfort, anxiety. Depression, aggression, and the feeling of isolation.
Television
Television has the potential to be beneficial or harmful to children. The benefits to watching TV is that there are educational shows such as Animal Planet, documentaries and some educational cartoons. For these purposes the TV can aid in the development of our children but where do the parents draw the line? TV is not being watched for beneficial purposes and turn into a negative aspect in our children’s lives.
It has been shown that people have little brain activity while they are watching TV. According to
The Journal of Cognitive Liberties “For a brain to comprehend and communicate complex meaning, it must be in a state of “chaotic disequilibrium.” This means that there must be a dynamic flow of communication between all of the regions of the brain, which facilitates the comprehension of higher levels of order (breaking conceptual thresholds), and leads to the formation of complex ideas. High levels of chaotic brain activity are present during challenging tasks like reading, writing, and working mathematical equations in your head. They are not present while watching TV. Levels of brain activity are measured by an electroencenograph (EEG) machine. While watching television, the brain appears to slow to a halt, registering low alpha wave readings on the EEG. This is caused by the radiant light produced by cathode ray technology within the television set. Even if you're reading text on a television screen the brain registers low levels of activity. Once again, regardless of the content being presented, television essentially turns off your nervous system” (http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/5jcl/5JCL59.htm). What does this say about the children that are placed in front of the TV for hours and hours? The excessive amount of TV time does what to our children’s brain activity? This has caused our children’s academics to landslide to a new low. Test scores and the level of concentration are deteriorating. The excessive amount of television has also been known to lead to obesity from lack of activity and aggression due to all the violence that is shown today. Television should be monitored and limited to a small amount to aid our kids to become active and want to read books instead of watch television.
Internet
The benefit to the web is that it allows for full access to any information that we need to know. This is a great resource for students, doctors, nurses and many more. Google is everyone’s friend and even young children know how to search for information on the internet. It has opened a new world up; any information that is needed can now be found. However, there are many concerns with the amount of information out there today. There are many sites today that our children spend time on such as, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and plenty more. These sites allow people to stay in contact. Or allows single people to find one another without having to go to a bar. The internet also leads to negative aspects such as pedophiles, cyber bullying, isolation and depression.
The internet can be a scary place because it opens access to our youth, allows for our children to see and read inappropriate material for their age. The internet leaves kids with feelings of isolation and depression. Kids today may have a thousand friends online but have no one to physically talk to or spend time with. This leaves them with feelings that they might not understand such as isolation and depression. The internet also opens the door for pedophiles to prey on our youth. It gives access to grown men and women to talk and send pictures to our children, whom without the internet they wouldn’t be able to come close to. Facebook itself has opened many doors for predators and has opened the door to a new type of bully called cyber bullying.
Cyber bullying has been known to ruin and destroy many youths. It not only allows for one kid to pick on another kid but allows a platform for kids to feel worthless and be made fun of. Before the internet children already had a hard time with bullies at school. How do children feel with more bullies, ones they have not even met? This is the type of negatively that the internet has brought to our society. Does the good outweigh the bad; this is what everyone should be asking themselves.
(http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/teens-fact-sheet)
Video Games
Some children will tell you video games help with eye and hand coordination. Video games can be used for an award system, for good behavior and good grades. This can be a motivation tool for children to do better. It entertains the kids, allowing for the parents to have time to complete task such as laundry and dinner. These can all be said to be good aspects of video games yet without proper supervision and monitoring it can quickly lead to aggression, addiction, obesity and social isolation.
Unlike the video games that were played when I was a child such as Zelda and Mario Brothers, today’s video games are filled with violence, gore and sexual innuendos. The video games today use blood, half naked woman and foul language to encourage kids to play more. The children that play these games for extended periods of time are exposed to violent behavior daily, making them susceptible to believing that violence is ok. This type of exposure is increasing children’s aggressive behaviors. “The effect of violent video games on children has been a public health concern for many years. No quantitative analysis of video game contents for games rated as suitable for all audiences was made until 2001 (47). The study concluded that many video games rated as suitable for all audiences contained significant amounts of violence (64% contained intentional violence and 60% rewarded players for injuring a character” (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/). The excessive amount of time gaming in our youth has also increased the rate of addiction. Gaming for an extended amount of time is causing our children to become addicted to gaming. This has caused a decrease in kid’s activity level and an increase in obesity among society today. Gaming hasn’t only affected our children mentally and physically, it also has caused a decrease in academics. Gamers are spending more time on the games and less time reading and doing homework decreasing their grades and their probability of going to college.
Music Videos
Music is the path to everyone’s soul. It is listened to daily by most everyone. There are many types of music allowing for self-expression. Music videos were meant for people to see the story that they have been listening to for so long. People can sometimes relate the song to the emotions that they feel.
Much like everything today music videos are now focused around sex and violence. MTV has turned into soft porn making our kids believe that being half naked in public is acceptable. The young girls see thin naked woman in these music videos and believe that this is how they are supposed to look. The young boys see women portrayed as sex toys believing that this is how woman should be treated. “Up to 75% of videos contain sexually explicit material (45), and more than half contain violence that is often committed against women. Women are portrayed frequently in a condescending manner that affects children’s attitudes about sex roles.
Attractive role models are the aggressors in more than 80% of music video violence. Males are more than three times as likely to be the aggressors” (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov).What kind of message is this sending our youth? Sex and drugs sell so let’s just put it in our kids’ faces daily. Parents are being told this is normal now, monitor your kids better my question is how? Drugs and sex are portrayed everywhere now. In most videos today crack is being smoked and naked woman are dancing around it. Music videos are nothing but negative, they lead to eating disorders and violence due to the kids trying to act like the music artist.
Bulletin Boards
There are good types of advertisement out there today. The “Stank You” commercial telling the kids not to smoke is wonderful, because Advertisements can be beneficial to single moms, staying home may see an advertisement for adult education that focus on single parents who work. This in turn would result in that mom calling the school and possibly starting college to better herself. There are advertisements for everything and targeted towards everyone such as; are all advertisements back the answer is no but does the good outweigh the bad.
Marketing is huge; the multibillion dollar enterprise. Sex, Violence and drugs are the biggest sellers today. Commercials’ are on almost 24 hours of the day, 7 days a week on every channel, so how do parents regulate what isn’t in their hands? If children are raised in a world where these things are everywhere on TV, internet and bullion boards how do we as parents explain that these things are inappropriate. For example, Captain Morgan commercials are seen by all ages telling our youth that to drink is to be cool. Bail bond commercials are showing them that if you get in legal trouble we will get you out of jail. This is what society is teaching our youth.

Depression
Depression is a growing disability nationwide. According to HHS public access “Television exposure and total media exposure in adolescence are associated with increased odds of depressive symptoms in young adulthood, especially in young men” (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov ). The more advanced our technology gets the more adolescents get diagnosed. Yes, depression can be linked to many aspects of an individual life such as genetics, environment and social grounds. Youth today spend most their time on social media. Posting what they ate, presents received, who’s dating who, etc. This makes people want what others have. For example, one kid gets a 300-dollar pair of shoes every kid that sees that post in turn now wants that kids 300 hundred dollar shoes. This leaves our youth feeling unequal, un-accomplishment, unpopularity and leads to low self-esteem. Kids today are making false identities to find some type of self-esteem and self-worth. These feelings leave them stuck between a rock and a hard spot. Many youths are in front of a computer most the time pretending to be someone that they are not. Ultimately leading to severe depression and the inability to make true friends.
Aggression
Our world is a violent place. People see it every day through television, gaming or the internet. Aggression is created in our youth by constant exposure to violence in their daily lives. Blood and guts are now normal so when there’s a little bit of blood due to a fight it’s not a big deal. The more violent exposure our youth have and less communication is a recipe for creating more aggressive and violent youth.

Isolation People’s time is spent in front of a computer, on a phone, or gaming system. These are all sources of multimedia. This amount of time with electronics and away from human contact will lead to isolation. People that feel uncomfortable around other people will, in turn, isolate themselves causing other mental disabilities. In today’s society isolation is part of most people’s lives. They live through social media and don’t realize that they are isolating themselves so much until they can no longer be around other people. Facebook friends are not the same as having a friend to talk in person. This type of isolation makes people feel depressed, isolated, angry and antisocial. Multimedia also has positive aspects and technology will only grow from here but the negative aspects far outweigh the positive. We must ask ourselves are we as Americans really thinking about the future of our youth or the greed of today.
Summary
Multimedia like everything else can be beneficial in moderation. People have a hard time limiting themselves leaving the door open to the negative aspects of too much time spent multi media. This leaves us with less and less human interaction; causing more and more feelings of depression, isolation and aggression. The world around us is filled with images of sex, drugs and violence making these things more acceptable every generation to our youth. There are positive and negative aspects to most, the question today is, is the benefit to multimedia outweighing the negative aspects to multimedia, I say no.

References
Impact of media use on children and youth. (n.d.). Retrieved February 28, 2016, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2792691
The Journal of Cognitive Liberties. (n.d.). Retrieved February 28, 2016, from http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/5jcl/5JCL59.htm
Teens Fact Sheet. (2012). Retrieved February 29, 2016, from http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/teens-fact-sheet
Primack, B. A., Swanier, B., Georgiopoulos, A. M., Land, S. R., & Fine, M. J. (n.d.). Association Between Media Use in Adolescence and Depression in Young Adulthood: A Longitudinal Study. Retrieved February 29, 2016, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3004674