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Mass media and Youth

Mass media are full of reports about the toll that drugs, alcohol, sex, peer pressure, and a coarse culture are taking on young people. There are also plenty of experts on TV explaining the causes of youth problems, even though the experts seem never to agree.

Undoubtedly, it is rare for today's teenager not to have known or at least known of someone who was injured or killed because he or she made a bad choice. High schools are rumor mills about this girl or that who got pregnant. Everybody has seen stories of teenagers dying in a car accident after a night of rowdy beer drinking. These are not all underprivileged kids from broken homes or kids who got put in "the system" for crimes. They were kids who were bombarded with ad images linking adult friendship and fun to beer or linking lifelong fulfillment to sexual suggestiveness (and no fallout from mistakes).

Ads, MTV, sitcoms and talk shows in which every other line is a sexual innuendo--these are all just as available to teenagers as they are to adults. Thus the real moral mystery is why more young people don't get trapped and ruin their lives at age 17. Besides, as the staggering examples of immoral adult behavior show every day on the news, nobody has to be 17 to mess up the lives of loved ones. And adults' self-forgiving explanations of their own behavior, when they are so intent on controlling others' behavior (remember the self-righteous politician Mr. Henry Hyde when condemning Mr. Clinton for sex reasons but describing his own extramarital affair as "a youthful indiscretion"?) do not fool anybody over 14 who has a brain. Such people pretend youth are the source of moral problem; they could look in the mirror to see a better source.

Still, figuring out how to combat negative moral influences remains a challenge. Contrary to the impression left by experts, young people do reflect on moral challenges that they face. Like anybody, they would like to live a decent life an...

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Mass media and Youth. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 14:05, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1689342.html