by Erin Elizabeth

"Tainted Love of Media

In this society the best way to get your message across is to a large audience. What better way to reach and effect the youth than the media, an outlet that allows you wide access to countless people across many markets. By using the media to express your opinions, views, and beliefs, you have the potential to reach impressionable eyes. However, we have no true control as to who holds this power. We do not have a say in who gets to release the next newspaper article, the next music video, or the next clothing line. All we can do as consumers is sit idly, and wait to converse on the matter. We do not get to stop it from reaching our hands, forever leaving a mark in our minds. This is the downside to the media.

Social networking is something that anyone who lives in modern civilization has access.. Things like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and even dating sites, all are readily available to anyone with a computer, or cellular device. They are places where you can find people with common interest, goals, and humor. We escape to these places when our average day just is not enough, and we wish to be with different friends or be different ourselves. The problem is not the sites alone, it is the things posted on these sites that can effect others. Links to music videos of half naked women, fights on worldstar hip hop and articles from the Times or even Cosmo that can change our moods and our minds. As teenagers we have the most free-time to observe and absorb most of the information floating around cyber space, and we do. We see these images of models with perfect skin, bodies, clothes, hair, and it makes us loathe who we are as individuals. We do not see beauty in our own way; we see beauty in the acceptable way of others. Being anything bigger than a six 6 is frowned upon, unless you can miraculously get the "video vixen" body with the ridiculous hip to waist ratio without having to pay for implants. Media accepts the extreme of things. Either do it really small or do it really big. There is no average, there is no in-between.

Then, if you don't have the latest shoes, or there isn't a brand attached to your outfit, why are you even going out in public? Why face the world when you clearly weren't made to be a part of it? Teenagers will get jobs just to fund a lifestyle they do not have the means to live. The depression rate in teens and adults are at an all time high, and you have to wonder is it because of what they are seeing portrayed of them on TV? Is it because we don't look like the cast of Pretty Little Liars, we don't have a cool laid back vampire boyfriend like in Twilight or the Vampire Diaries, or because our hair and skin don't shine like in the commercials?

Even for young males the pressure is on. A study showed that many teen males were trying to either build up their bodies by working out and taking supplement pills at a young age, or turning to eating disorders to be extremely thin. Males often get looked over, but they feel the pressure too. How many times have you seen shows throw on a random woman of color or a larger size and hope the world will be satisfied, but never do the same for men? A common error is the belief that boys are not as corrupted as females.. If the girl of their dreams is pining after a man she saw in a magazine how can he compete? How does he feel when he isn't the best singer, dresser, or dancer? What can he do now that will make him noticeable?

While the media is bringing us closer together it is also breaking us down. We need to see more realistic people on our screens. We need to see lifestyles that we can lead, by being hardworking not something we stumble into because we are good looking. The drive to be famous is so much greater now than before because it is the only way you can have a voice. It is the only way people will hang on to your every word and for you to essentially matter. The media has taken the power out of the hands of the many, and given it to the few. Those who have it, often times abuse it, and with abuse the effects are thrown unto the ones who greedily swallow what is being fed to them. There are positive figures in the media, but unfortunately their stories don't sell as well as the train wrecks. In a way the train wrecks are the closest things we have to being average, because they make mistakes just like the rest of us. So we watch, we love, and we fight for the toxins in our lives. Still you have to wonder, how far is too far when the people you are hurting are the ones who want more?