Negative Impact of Media
The influence of media on the world is currently bringing it closer to becoming a global village. Media has many forms making it more influential in the world. Various types of media include broadcast, spoken or written as long as it can reach a broad audience making it have a significant influence in the world’s modern culture. Social media involves electronic communications such as websites used for microblogging and social networking which enable users to share various information, personal messages, ideas, and videos by creating an online community (Lisette, Gensler, ; Peter 83).
Many advantages of media lead to even more growth in this sector. However, there are also some particular consequences and harsh disadvantages of media. This paper begins by looking at the negative impacts of media. Next, it will present how media uses some issues against people such as psychological, medical and social issues. Finally, it will give how media adversely affects individual’s lives by creating addiction, causing human image dissatisfaction, and destroying interpersonal relationships.
Media addiction is one of the common issues that arise as the negative impact of media on many youths. The young generation spends a lot of their time on social media. Most of these hours would have been used in doing constructive activities or reading. Many youths are Facebook addicts; some cannot go a day without watching various programs on televisions. Online streaming is also commonly identified with many people (Daria, et al. 1987).
Media is everywhere around us making it more addictive to people. Vehicles, houses, educational institutes, and other many places cannot miss having media related materials. There are those obsessed with media to the extent that they do not have time for making friends. All day they stay indoors with their phones, televisions or computers.
Media is another cause of dissatisfaction of body image. In this new era of technology, it is evident that social media is an influential factor in dictating peoples’ lifestyle. It influences how people act in front of others with the aim of gaining attention or recognition. These are the leading factors to body dissatisfaction. In most cases, it is women who are always self-obsessed, and they work hard towards making sure that they are better than others.
According to Rachel, and Blaszczynski (23) media makes many women unhappy with their physical appearance because they can see more presentable persons in the social media than themselves. Dissatisfaction with body image is a leading factor to low self-esteem and depression. Many people are confronted when they make posts of their images (Neralie & Gradisar 736). Negative responses on their appearances are some of the prominent elements to the dissatisfaction of body image. Men are also struggling to be more muscular and more noticeable because of media influence.
To sum up, many social media sites are aimed at connecting people. However, this seems to be in contrary with what is happening to users. According to Katie (2281), communication is now limited to mobile phones making most people base their concentrations on their many social accounts making them often neglect to have actual interactions, particularly physical interactions with people around them. Media denies many people the feel of human contact or having a close company and be able to exchange opinions.
Interpersonal relationships have been interfered with because people lack the sense of closeness to share ideas. Introduction of smartphones makes people connect much more comfortable regardless of the place, making it hurt interpersonal relationships by diverting the focus of communicating face to face with other people. People should reconsider how they use media because it has negative effects.
Work Cited
Cain, Neralie, and Michael Gradisar. “Electronic media use and sleep in school-aged children and adolescents: A review.” Sleep medicine 11.8 (2010): 735-742.
Cohen, Rachel, and Alex Blaszczynski. “Comparative effects of Facebook and conventional media on body image dissatisfaction.” Journal of eating disorders 3.1 (2015): 23.
Davis, Katie. “Young people’s digital lives: The impact of interpersonal relationships and digital media use on adolescents’ sense of identity.” Computers in Human Behavior 29.6 (2013): 2281-2293.
De Vries, Lisette, Sonja Gensler, and Peter SH Leeflang. “Popularity of brand posts on brand fan pages: An investigation of the effects of social media marketing.” Journal of interactive marketing 26.2 (2012): 83-91.
Kuss, Daria J., et al. “Internet addiction in adolescents: Prevalence and risk factors.” Computers in Human Behavior 29.5 (2013): 1987-1996.
