Media and its impact on the youngsters

Media has a greater impact on the younger generation more that the school or family has on them.The means of media which influence young generation are television, radio, internet, newspapers, magazines, books, broadcasting and text publishers. All these manipulate youngsters in what concerns culture, politics, social life, religion, fashion, education, sports and other interests too. The media plays a substantial role in the building of attitudes, behaviour and physical aspects of youth today.

Almost each teenager has a TV in his room and he may stick to it for hours together to watch a show, a movie or to find out any interesting information in the discovery channel. But they are not realizing that the TV shows them what they want to see and not what they are supposed to see. Nowadays, TV focuses more on entertainment s (we cannot deny that) although the three pillars of media are : information, education and entertainment. Here, the TRP ratings come into the scene which compels the channels to show only what the audience wants to see. Then, the internet has become much more important than the TV because it offers a variety of facts on different areas of interest. Now teenagers download a movie from the internet and watch it at home instead of going to cinema halls. Moreover they can communicate with friends and relatives no matter how far they are. Most of the youngsters spend maximum time on the internet in chatting or orkutting or tweeting or using facebook, etc. They get hooked up for hours in front of their PC/laptop. They prefer not to buy newspapers & amp; magazines as they can read them from the internet. Advertisements play a special role as they can influence young people to buy different things or to follow certain behaviours.

Media strongly affects youth culture. It is one of the important means to reach out to the masses and mould their thinking and decision making. The positive media cannot attract attention of the masses and to gain viewership, negative media has to be incorporated to balance out and attract the masses but a line has to be drawn between the positive and the negative media in the interest of the gen next......!!!