Impressionable Minds

Katie Tkachuk
Professor Hake
ENGWR 302
26 September 2012
Impressionable Minds
We find ourselves in a modern world, during the so-called “age of information” and “age of technology”. But what else is it an age of? What seems to be a promising future is muddied up by corruption and lies. Our technology isn’t just a source of valuable information, but also of lies, advertisements, and propaganda. Everything is getting more technological and the American family has lost many of its traditional values because of it. “Spending time with family” is now synonymous to “watching TV together”, your child’s teacher is now Dora, and your teen’s role model is Kesha. The media affects every aspect of family life, but it has the most direct impact on our children; it affects the way they are brought up, therefore affecting what kind of adults they become.
From a young age, American children are raised by the television; the TV has become their babysitter, their teacher, and their friend. The parents are busy and have barely any time to spend with their children. One parent could be at work while another is doing household chores, so who will watch the baby? Well, the toddler seems entranced by Elmo on television, so the stay-at-home parent doesn’t need to worry. At least that’s the mindset of many American parents. Quality time spent with their children is cut down, at first because they have no time, but later forming a habit in the child as the child gets addicted to watching television and would rather do that than spend time with his/her parents. At first, the parents think it’s fine; the shows are educational so what’s the harm? What they don’t notice are all the advertisements that are scattered within each episode. During kid’s shows, there are advertisements geared specifically towards children, easily manipulating their impressionable minds. They play with the child’s emotions, drawing on their feelings of jealousy and fear of becoming an outcast for not having that certain toy. They reinforce peer pressure and conformity; from an age as young as 5, children are brainwashed into materialism. They are led to believe that objects bring happiness and are the solutions to all their problems, and parents don’t even pay enough attention to realize what is happening to their children.
Why is this happening? Modern parents don’t have much time on their hands anymore because, as statistics show, more than a third of them didn’t intend to become parents in the first place, and are therefore not ready for it (Warner). This is once again in large part due to the media. The media is glamorizing the single, unmarried life, making people believe that marriage is “just a piece of paper” and staying in a relationship with someone for such a long period of time is boring and restricting. It is glamorizing partying, fleeting pleasures, and living “in the moment” without thinking about the future. Another major reason for the rise of unplanned pregnancies is misinformation. Studies show that the majority of women who have unintended pregnancies are lacking in education. According to an article in New York Times, 51% of births (in women aged 20-30) outside of marriage were from women with no college education (DeParle, Tavernise). The media has had a part in this too. A lot of the misinformation is obtained through watching television; there are many TV shows and movies that don’t portray pregnancy and fertility correctly, and people believe them. The internet could also be the source of misinformation; if one doesn’t know how to find reliable sources, there are many sources that can be misleading and yet sound true. Therefore, these new parents didn’t intend for this to happen, they were just “living in the moment”, not thinking about consequences. They never planned on even staying together, but now that a child has been brought into the world, they need to put up with each other for their sake (and some don’t even do that). This causes broken families, divorce (if they even get married in the first place), or just major conflict within the family, if they manage to stay together.
This in turn causes a continuous feedback loop: misinformation in the media/manipulation of people by the media causes careless people who end up having an unwanted child, which causes the child to have a troublesome family life, which in turn usually causes lack of education for the child (among other issues), and that creates more careless, uneducated adults once the child grows up, once again manipulated by the media. Without a good role model within the family, they will look outside the family, specifically in the media because it is easily-accessible. This is why the institution of marriage is disintegrating, it’s the reason there are so many unplanned pregnancies, and it is the reason for all the carelessness and lack of ambition. Naïve young teenagers watch a lot of television and movies, getting immersed in the way of life they are portraying. They see celebrities; rich and glamorous, which then becomes their idea of success. They see so much of it on TV that they believe they can do it too. They believe that they don’t need an education, and can get through life by becoming famous and then rich. What makes it worse is the fact that most popular things in the media are completely unintelligent, and usually don’t even have a point to them other than to make money for whoever they were made by. Teenagers are tricked into believing that this is what is good, what is creative, and that this is what obtained these celebrities (their idols) their fame and fortune. Little do they know, this is usually short-lived; fifteen minutes of fame and then comes the crash back down to reality (and that’s IF they even get that far).
The media is the main cause of the decline of our society, specifically our families. It corrupts young minds, who then grow up into careless adults, in turn raising more corrupted young minds. The popular media has no sense of what is creative, what is intelligent/informative, or what is poetic; all they care about is what makes them money. Young children and teens don’t see that, and it is the parents’ job to teach them otherwise. However, many of them never learned to see through the media façade in the first place, or they just don’t care. If we continue in this vicious cycle, it will be even harder to reverse.

Works Cited
DeParle, Jason and Tavernise, Sabrina. “For Women Under 30, Most Births Occur Outside Marriage”. The New York Times. 17 February 2012. Web. 26 September 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/18/us/for-women-under-30-most-births-occur-outside-marriage.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www>
Warner, Jennifer. “More Than a Third of Babies Unintended”. WebMD. July 2012. Web. 26 September 2012. <http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20120724/more-than-a-third-of-babies-unintended>

Cited: DeParle, Jason and Tavernise, Sabrina. “For Women Under 30, Most Births Occur Outside Marriage”. The New York Times. 17 February 2012. Web. 26 September 2012. &lt;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/18/us/for-women-under-30-most-births-occur-outside-marriage.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_moc.semityn.www&gt; Warner, Jennifer. “More Than a Third of Babies Unintended”. WebMD. July 2012. Web. 26 September 2012. &lt;http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20120724/more-than-a-third-of-babies-unintended&gt;