Teen Girls and Media
Because of its pervasiveness, mass media such as magazines and television programs are increasingly in a position to influence the behavior and attitudes of teenage girls. In fact, television programs such as ER and sports-oriented teen magazines have been lauded for providing girls with positive role models.
Unfortunately, these programs and magazines remain the exception rather than the rule. Rather than promote healthy lifestyles or give positive role models, much of the media targeted to teens are both physically and psychologically harmful. This paper examines two of these main effects - the promotion of unhealthy habits and lifestyles and the growing tendency of these media to sexualize teens and turn them into consumers.
Unhealthy habits
For noted feminist Germaine Greer, the popularity of television shows such as Baywatch represent a growing pandemic, where all women are expected to conform to an unrealistic body shape. Greer terms this pandemic as "body dysmorphic disorder," one that is tied to an unnatural female shape that is achieved through starvation diets, depilatories and surgery (Greer 65-67).
This need to conform to unrealistic body standards infects girls at a progressively earlier age. A recent study of 12,000 children between the ages of 9 and 14 show that media's influence on girls' dieting and weight concerns equaled the influence exerted by parents and peers ("Weight concerns in preteens and young teens influenced by media..."). This represents a change from just a decade ago, when parents and peers were the biggest socialization factors in an adolescent's life.
This ability to influence teens is disturbing, mainly because most media choose to present a homogenous...
One of those alarming physical changes is that the younger a person is when they begin drinking, even at low levels the more likely they are to become alcoholics. This change even overrides a known genetic predisposition for alcoholism. (Butler, July 4, 2006) Time forward ads regarding adult failure could be developed at a later time but again such images and concerns do not seem to sway teens. Funding
Social Media on Adolescent Girls One current issue in society that has long been pervasive throughout the decades has been the power of the media and the negative impact it has wielded on adolescent girls. MTV videos, the fashion and modeling industries, commercials, film and television all show unrealistic portrayals of women with perfect appearances and hard to achieve bodies. Young people have engaged in the process of comparing themselves to
Eating Disorders Among Teenage Girls Eating disorders have become an epidemic among teenage girls. Fueled in large part by the media's promotion of thinness as a physical ideal for young women, the eating disorder problem has escalated over the past few decades. Girls are beginning to diet in elementary school and may be binging, purging, or starving before they are ten years old. Because eating disorders reflect complex psychological issues, there
Preventing Adolescent Pregnancy (PAP) (mimicking the methods used by Lederman and Mian, 2003), followed by a follow-up study that tracked the rates of pregnancy among participants in the PAP program. Recommendations Overall, this paper shows that research articles on teen pregnancy (such as Lederman and Mian, 2003), could benefit from a closer look at anecdotal observations and the real-world impact on parents and children. In contrast, popular articles (like the Health24.com
The result of this, as seen above, is that these mothers lack job skills, making it difficult not only to find employment that could adequately support themselves and their children, but also to retain these jobs once they find them. The result is that about 64% of children born under such conditions live in poverty, compared to 7% of children born to married women older than 20 and who
According to Tamara Kreinin, president of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S., "Manipulating facts about condoms is using a scare tactic to try and get kids not to be sexually active" (Morse, 2002). One of the consequences of a lack of full and complete information to youth actually causes self-imposed ignorance of their own safety. If adolescents do not get the proper education on protecting themselves from
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