Module 2: Reading’s
Cyber bullying is a new version of old fashion teasing. Crime rates and violence, especially in schools are increasing more in these past couple years then they have in the past ten years. What’s causing this? Are parents allowing their kids too much freedom and not monitoring their behaviors, friends, and whereabouts? Could this be a leading factor to the issue? It is more common in today’s society that both parents are working employees. I personally have noticed that kids are given house keys, meanwhile their parents are at work and children have a house to themselves after school. Teens and children have access to social media and with new technology it is harder to monitor these smart phones and the Internet. Kids in today’s generation are not like the kids when I was growing up. One great example I mean by this, is clothing and fashion trends. They way young girls dress today is sometimes very provocative and revealing. Tying into that, chapter three states that the fear of kids communicating inappropriately with one another makes it easier on the Internet to interact with strangers, creating new concerns about cyber predators. (Sternheimer, 2013) The extremely sad and disgusting truth is that predators exist and they are everywhere. Many articles and stories shared in this chapter and on the news have focused on young girls flirting and revealing personal information to the person they are chatting with. They believe it is a cute boy their age and because one cannot see who is on the other side it is possible that it can be a predator. This issue raises potential dangers adults could pose to young people on-line and kidnappings. Media and the Internet at times can be helpful, informative and even educational. However, it can also be very dangerous, life threatening and harmful. Chapter 3 discuses the harmful affects in media that have ruined relationships in adults and have harmed the life of children. It’s extremely sad and heartbreaking to know that cyber bullying and other on-line issues have gotten worse and that kids can be so mean to bully others via on-line.
As chapter three discusses the harmful and saddening affects of on-line bullying, chapter four takes a turn and discusses the social problems in terms of the Internet “dumbing down” Americans. One thing that I wanted to touch on from this chapter that I found the most interesting is the issue of the Internet. Google and other Internet sources allow for the easy access to any information and answers. Is whats being posted on-line nonsense or is it more informative? Does being able to research on your smart phone cause us to be more uneducated then having to go out and find the information through physical or environmental research. In this chapter the author suggest that the Internet is a lazy and easy way for us to find information and because of that being an issue, it is destroying us more than it benefiting to us. Sternheimer also brings up the issue with television and how the informative programs don’t exist much anymore. Television is viewed in today’s society more for entertainment rather than education. If I were to do a survey right now, I bet the majority of people would view TV for entertainment than education. For example, it’s Sunday night, you just got home changed into a comfy outfit and plopped on the couch. If you turn on the TV and there’s only three programs on, 60 Minutes, Game of Thrones, or Walking Dead, which are you going to watch?
In the article, Struggling with Stereotypes, Cortes states that the words that we use to stereotype people are being used so frequently that they are loosing their power. This statement made me reflect on the assignment we completed in Module 1 about the Barnyard lies. For example, one that stood out to me the most was how media portrayed men and their hierarchy roles. Such as, it being more common to say “hey guys” to a group of people versus saying “hey ladies” without offending anyone or someone finding it disrespectfully wrong. That activity opened my eyes to how Media has affected us in that, commonly used phrases or the way society displays certain topics are becoming so routine that we don’t even realize it when we see it. This raises the question for me, is media the main culprit as to why society has become more desensitized to the world and the trauma? If this affects us as adults and yet we know and can understand right from wrong, what about our developing youth?
We hear that generalizations and stereotypes exist everywhere, schools, restaurants, and of course the media. Cortes really puts this topic into perspective and I was quite shocked that a lot of this information I had already known but never really critically thought about. Such as, restaurants, when you dine at a restaurant their categorizing their entrees to meet that of the culture. For example, you wouldn’t find Mexican food at a Middle Eastern restaurant. It’s as simple as that but because labeling, categorizing, and stereotyping exist more than we see or acknowledge we become immune to the issue. He also talked about how shows depict characters and how each individual has their own social category. A great example I thought of is the show, American Crime. You have the rich white junkie, the African American male drug dealer, and the families who come from money and their kids are in expensive schools and they outcast the poor society. These shows a labeling and stereotyping racial identity and it’s impacting our youth and the audience.
The article, Out of the Main Stream, focuses on sexual minorities and the mass media. The sexual minorities Gross is referring to is, lesbian women and gay men. Gross states that “These two groups also constitute by their very existence a presumed threat to the “natural” (sexual and/or political) order of things.” (Gross, 2001) The fact that the media can view someone’s sexuality identity out of the norm and problematic to viewers, yet the movie Fifty Shades of Grey can expose sexual violence and deem it as sexy and erotic is so upsetting to me. Our media believes that they are helping us by exposing us to reality, when in fact they are potentially corrupting viewers. Media does not display a fair representation of the LGBTQ community, rather they have a character and instantly within the first few episodes are typically killed off. Gross states that the majority of these characters are those who represent the elites who define their public agenda. After completing activity 12, making representations of identities visible, I could not agree more. In my experience with this assignment, I found that a huge majority of the people who were representing the norm were, middle aged, middle to upper class, Caucasian males viewed as heterosexuals.
The issue with this public agenda is that the media is not telling us what to think but what to think about. Their message to the public is that this representation of people is what is considered the average American family. In my opinion, the majority of society doesn’t want to watch shows based on gay men raising a family and their reality. They want to watch the show where the American dad drives an SUV and goes to work while his wife performs her female gender roles, like cleaning cooking, and taking care of the kids. I blame that on the media. For so long they have instilled into viewers that anything outside their so called considered norm, is unacceptable and because of that we have expectations of what we want to see on TV. One of my favorite shows is Modern Family. Its a glimpse of reality because you have the modern American family, then the older Caucasian man who divorced and remarried a Latina 25 years younger than him. Then you have the Gay couple who adopted a daughter from an orphanage in Vietnam. In summary, lesbian women and gay men do not constitute the ideological minority the same way that the typical American modern family does. More common that not when they are given a scene they are killed off easily or are not treated properly and fairly. The message being sent to the audience, that only the American modern family is socially acceptable is affecting viewers. This shows the viewers that society is not accepting of gay men and lesbian women as much as they accept the modern family.
A huge problem we are facing in our society today is that “we have a hard time believing in possibility and imagining that things could be otherwise.” (Tollefson, 2016) An issue leading to this problematic mindset is that teaches are not doing much to enforce the positive possibilities and outcomes in their classrooms. This reading reminds me of a blog written by Nicolas Ferguson, he states that “your success depends on your ability to believe in the possibilities.” (2008) Audrey Hepburn once pointed out that the word “impossible” actually says, “I’m possible.” I love that and I agree because I feel as humans we tend to doubt ourselves before believing in achievement. I’m guilty of this myself. In most situations I’d like to think the worst possible to prevent myself from getting hurt or let down. In reality, I am setting myself up for failure and if the mentality from the get go is to fail, than chances are, most likely I wont succeed. The fear of failing overcomes the wondrous outcomes that could exist if you believe and imagine.
Teachers have a huge influence on their students, they are their role models. If a teacher has a hard time believing in a student and encouraging them to succeed how can we expect the majority of students to believe in themselves. In this article Dr. Tollefson also discuses the importance and issues of lack of power in schools. In a study conducted by Dr. Kaia Tollefson, it was found that one of the biggest violations, which is disclosing issues in education to others, were discussed by groups in the study. This raises the question, is the power among teachers lacking because there is more negative comments and less support in school systems? Essentially, have teachers given up and become more lenient with their students resulting in inadequacy? Once authority can actually be defined, understood, then acted upon can schools gain power and educate their students in believe and imagining certainty.
I chose the article, Advertising to Children and Teens; Current Practices, because we have focused greatly on the influence media has on our youth. One of the biggest questions that society raises is, should we be protectionist or constructivist? What do you believe? Should we protect our youth from the power of media or should we allow them the experience of enjoying media yet advocate analytical skills? One thing I found interesting and translated into my own words, is that the author of this article acknowledges that media and advertisements primary target is children and teens. An important factor of this research is to provide a list of the persuasive techniques and methods being used to market children and teens. However, the issue is that kids are not being provided the full truth. Highlights in this article mention that the research being done is scarce, incomplete, or outdated. (Rideout, 2014) The writer of this article, Victoria Rideout, touches on a few lies that on-line advertising uses to market children and teens. In module one we learned that Huasman described several ways that media lies to us. One strategy used in the article is the logical leapfrog, especially in on-line gaming. Advertisers try to sell to the parents and youth that if a child is an on-line gamer then it can actually stimulate their brain. Or it could potentially assist with teens and socialization because they have something in common they can talk to their friends about. We all know this is a phony selling technique, in reality those so called proofs are not logical of on-line gaming. This article also mentions that the Coca-Cola ad used celebrities to make their campaign and engage in the children which is also a persuasive techniques. Teens are our trend setters, their a huge culture that marketers want to target. They don’t have jobs or financial responsibilities and they receive an allowance, therefore they have money to throw around. If teens see that celebrities are doing it, then there going to want the same things. In conclusion, there are many areas of improvement media campaigns and advertisements need to focus on when marketing teens and children. I would agree with this article in that we can’t control the exposure children have to the media. It is everywhere whether we like it or not, so it is our job to educate them. As Hausman would agree, educate them so they are able to make judgments based on their own opinions and knowledge not based on the lie of the advertisers.
