New media technologies are expanding and renewing traditional methods rapidly. It’s visible the 21st century is changing ways on how data is delivered and received to young people. For some young people imagining a world without social media, instant access entertainment, streaming sites and mobile devices are far from an easy way of living. The use of these devices influences younger people on fashion, language choice, how and where they eat and ideas on relationships. Mass media has embedded into the lives of young people conditioning and influencing the lifestyle they lead.
Living in a world continually attached to entertainment, education and their social lives are incongruous circumstances in comparison to the preceding generations and historical periods. Throughout this ‘colonising’ state of use of new media, it presents itself on how highly impacted young people are. Media influences vastly on supply and demand through exploiting certain styles and cultures, this is how trends are practised and learnt. Some specific lifestyle choices within media like smoking and drinking alcohol can be proposed as fun, interesting or masculine. This is dangerous towards young people because it can influence young men into making these bad lifestyle choices to fit in or be seen cool and fun or as the ‘the man’. These choices made by young people can influence years of bad unhealthy habits and can cause serious health issues later in life. Media also heavily influences the idolisation of love and relationships which can lead young people into making rational decisions involving sex, sexuality and gender which can put young people at risk of making lifelong commitments or be a victim in an unsafe situation.
Social media has been found to negatively impact individual thoughts regarding body image although out media, filtered and photoshop images, users holiday photos floods feed as well as slim toned celebrities and social media influencers, this feeds into mass media to present unrealistic beauty standards. Many people have their insecurities regards appearance so spending high screen time online could cause these emotional problems to grow into serious health conditions like eating disorders or unhealthy relationships with exercise. This constitutes a group of vulnerable young people who are online, contributing to bad mental health. Online isn’t the only source to feed these unrealistic standards, advertising within TV and film also often show one specific body type. A British TV show ‘Love Island’ where a group of athletic, slim, healthy young people go to find love. During the advertisement breaks for the show, the advertisements likewise the appearance heavy programme were for breast enlargement clinics and ‘skinny’ detox teas, this is impacting the audience of young people watching this show to feel unacceptable and uncomfortable with how they look. Influencing bad relationships with body image instead of promoting young people to accept their body exactly how it is. Media similar to the example does create self-conscious issues before the person may have even thought about these things, pushing youth culture into the concept unless they look a certain ‘Instagram’ standard they shouldn’t feel comfortable with how their body looks, despite there being eight body types for women and three for men this is incredibly damaging to be conformed to one media image. Body image in the 1900s was influenced highly by Vogue and general mass media, each decade throughout the 1900s the idea of ‘perfect’ body image changed to what was fashionable, however, without handheld devices and high screen time, body awareness wasn’t as high as an issue as now in 2020, despite this magazines and TV did influence the perception of how young people view themselves.
The kind of impact media has over young people is so consequential, that the beauty standards media has determined are now affecting the attitude around this topic, mental health and how young people behave. This produces arrogant adults as a product of their environment who if they fit these guidelines they’re above others.
Media has changed how young people speak and write. New adaptive ways of writing such as social media posts, tweets, blogs, the English language is the most ruling language throughout the internet, in the face of the huge audience available for people to now communicate with. The public who posts, comment and communicate through media are mostly unfiltered and unsupervised providing freedom in the choice of language as there is no ‘language police’ to ensure a set standard of mixed language and grammar is appropriate. This new sense of freedom of choice within language creates trends, influencing young people to use new terminology when using social media and when speaking in real life. The progression of unacceptable language has grown rapidly in media. The vast displacement of language within media has been mutated resulting in young people had been taught projection of unparliamentary speaking, this is caused through films and social media usage. Hip-hop and black communities popularly use slang, reduction of typical words are now being used throughout media which is providing modern terminology to language which is continuing to be used globally. Modern informal language has created a generation language gap, traditional language and grammar rules are not as strict as they use to be within society, anyone in this era can become online journalists, authors and writers and put out any content they wish. This new flexible way of speaking within media is acting as a new standard guild for a language where young people spread and adopt these new ways of speaking. TV and radio influence non-standard English by using mispronunciation of words and normalising slang and ethnic dialects. In 1982, George Carlin a comedian during his routine listed seven common swear words which were forbidden to say on TV, he was arrested in front of his audience despite he argued he felt the words were ‘innocent’ others who replayed his show were sued. Profanity and influence of language have changed greatly throughout the media, shifting how young people are influenced to speak.
TV stars such as Gordan Ramsey is famous for swearing and bad offensive language on his show, influencing young people this is a comedy and “cool”. Swearing is increasing and becoming more accepted within youth culture, using acronyms into everyday language and making popular culture references. The bad use of language becoming more common, the reduction in upsetting people is becoming greater, and the use of slurs is made to cause more offence and is widely unacceptable throughout media and reality.
It is media which creates youth culture learnt through projection and influenced youth all around the world. Bad and good influences are created through the media, young people need to be taught control and responsibility when making decisions which can affect others, offend others or induce commitments or limitations on their life.
Young people choose to engage and act upon information based on the total of likes a post has, if the person who posted it has any ‘social media credibility’ and if the site is official. Young people are seeing these things like reliability, many could argue this is similar to the effect of mass media and fake news. This being said adults have to be responsible for the health and wellbeing of young people to ensure young people are using social media safely and be able to recognise the negative impacts of digital. Despite this, it has been recognised that young people result excelling as adopters of new media and technology which is proving young people to be master influencers of the future new trends.
Media influences young peoples political views in many more ways they did before the digital era. Newspapers, TV and online influences do shape young peoples voting behaviours, many young people use new media to access information and news reading from their devices. Political parties have learnt to make investments when it comes to social media as this is a way to reach young voters. Young people are encouraged to vote by celebrities political views, and this new way of using media has impacted election outcomes. Some young people may not have a high level of interest in politics or a deep understanding but seeing celebrities and media influencers sharing their views can influence change to youth culture in politics. Some young people may make political decisions on the likeability of the celebrity or influencer, shaping attitudes of young people are to turn to Youtube over the BBC. The problem with this replacement is that the young person may vote political party without true research or education, but vote base on the popularity of the party and to ‘fit in’ a specific group to have a sense of belonging or to feel ‘cool’, join in on chat and meme culture despite that political party may not benefit them personally. Before the use of new media, young people accessed political information from newspapers and debates on TV and radio, by young people learning about political party first handed, understanding their agenda allows youth to make own decisions instead of following someone else’s.
In 1995-2012 this generation of people has experienced poorer emotional health as new media is causing young people to feel more lonely, anxious, depressed undermining social skills and sleep. Many don’t know life without the internet, sustaining high screen times of 5-6 hours each day, experts advise two hours a day, spending longing screen time be affective for serious mental health problems. Young people now spend reduced times socialising with friends in the real world and are being sucked into a false world with unrealistic expectations from body image, happiness and relationships.
Before the 20th century, society wasn’t versatile to digital, extended families commonly would all accommodate with younger members of the family, usually, employment would vary between farm work or local business. When mass media, music and TV become accessible to younger people, different ways of living was introduced to there lifestyle which steered away from traditional values. Music is a change which can be represented for all times changing from CD to mp3 considering before people grew with vinyl records and vinyl players, music is now accessible everywhere for streaming and download.
2020-4-26-1587911039