Student Thoughts: The media are raising our children

Damian Gordon/Staff Writer

 

Kids may be the least important things in the world with the 18 years worth of work their parents do to try to prevent their children from falling victims to Darwinism. What is important is the adult that those kids turn into and this is the primary concern of the older generation.

The public is always wondering what the media’s effect on children is; a prominent concern because children are the indicators of changing times. What we influence them with can foretell how a certain future era or generation is going to play out.

The information age is already seeing this effect with an alarming amount of kids that don’t believe in Santa Claus. This is partly due to how many kids are just able to search it on the web and get instant results.

The illusion of many childhood figures that were once easy to keep alive is gone – look at wrestling, the outrageous Hulk Hogan can have his dark life outed in a couple of clicks.

Media has a powerful effect – if the World War I campaign is any indication – and the most moldable people out there are the youth. Obviously, it was effective as the U.S. army ads still play today, showing convincing dreams, like promises of how good life could be, a portrayal comparable to an Axe ad.

Children’s advertising has many regulations such as the time and place it can be shown or even the content of it. Advertisement targeted towards children receives heavier scrutiny than any other advertisement meant for an older audience, for good reason.

Look no further than the ‘80s where most cartoon shows couldn’t get green lit unless they had a positive message for kids, like G.I. Joe’s famous “the more you know” slogan.

Now, there is no filter content on what the youth can consume. While watching “Worldstar” Vines, I start searching up nice areas in Canada to live in because one of these kids might have kids of their own one day and I don’t want to be anywhere near that future.

A deranged person with a knife is less terrifying than a teen with a camera phone, simply because these teens are doing crazy life-threatening acts like setting themselves on fire “for the Vine.”

Kids can be our future and that scares people as they get older because the younger generation will control how their country is run. We, as a society, hope to instill the values we see as virtuous in our kids and in the things they see on their monitor.

This is not entirely about how youth are getting stupider, as they’re probably more knowledgeable than their parents were at this age. It’s about how the product of the media can be the producer of our future.

 

DISCLAIMER: 

The opinions presented within this page do not represent the views of FIU Student Media Editorial Board. These views are separate from editorials and reflect individual perspectives of contributing writers and/or members of the University community.

Image courtesy of Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/outsourcetechndu/8244547406/in/photolist-dyxsH5-eiY9wb-6jgcQC-noqth3-2ZmN8m-eiY9d7-9zTLhD-bAjPHJ-7VFsEE-689Vhh-7oqqFy-ePnQao-bDATiQ-6FkPYG-cfi8-bWcE6h-8uMLMj-MFfpw-3LafiZ-4kE7C8-oQXiy-4kE7XP-qZzNwD-itwHs4-BB36FY-8v4aA-91kE3M-7omwdg-h2FTA-88Jr3T-6gC2v-KAqRi-5dZMBY-7PSfto-752M7R-62Fbbb-9robx3-2ZFG6t-vZYno-MFftG-dpizY-312Y8B-e4CxjC-mpWd-42Kgaj-nQ9pNE-pvDo4o-bns6av-9YtayK-bycj6d