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The Impact of Mass Media on Female Teenagers

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Submitted By kater1213
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The Harmful Effects of Media on Teenage Girls’ Self Image
Media is one of the most effective tools in the world. People learn more from the media than any other single source of information. No matter where people look, they are constantly assaulted with images and ads, whether it is online, watching television, or even walking down the street. Because of the media’s ease of accessibility, it is vital that America understands the subliminal messaging behind the entertainment and advertising, not necessarily for the adults’ sake, but for the sake of their children’s impressionable minds. With the average teenager spending 10 and a half hours a day absorbing the media’s messages, it is imperative that parents become aware of the negative effects it is having on their child, especially young teenage girls. The media has targeted this demographic and the results are tragic. The average teenage girl spends 31 hours a week watching TV, 10 hours a week online, and 17 hours a week listening to music. (Kaiser Family par. 13) With that much time spent doing these things it’s a safe assumption that the media has a huge influence on teens and takes up a majority of their free time. Drew Altman, Ph.D., President and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation said, “When children are spending this much time doing anything, we need to understand how it’s affecting them – for good and bad” (par. 7). With the media imposing so much influence over young America, it is crucial that action be taken to mitigate the effects and teach teens that they’re in a futile pursuit of a impossible standard. Young girls are so frustrated trying to achieve this ideal of perfection that they resort to extreme measure like dieting, developing eating disorders, having sex at a young age to gain social acceptance, cutting, and even suicide.
One problem with the media is the ease in which they can

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