Media Portrayal Of Sexuality And Adolescence

Media Portrayal of Sexuality and Adolescence Adolescence, adolescence is that stage of our life in which we decide who we are and who we want to be but it is also the stage where we are so confuse and desperate to become someone that we often seek to be followers rather than look and pursuit our own paths. One of the aspects of life that we choose during this period of life is our sexuality which can often be influenced by other sources such as the media which we are going to discuss. The media has a great influence in how we see life in all aspects from how we have to behave, to physical stereotypes, to sexuality. The way the media portraits it can really affect in ones sexuality decision. According to Gruber & Grube (2000) “This
group may be particularly at risk because the cognitive skills that allow them to critically analyze messages from the media and to make decisions based on possible future outcomes are not fully developed”. In this period of time adolescents have an easy access to any kind of Medias such as television, radio, internet, social Medias, magazines, and many more where we can find many different materials with sexual content, such as music lyrics, films, images, and books.
The facts that the adolescents are so exposed to this can often affect the way the see their sexuality, many may consider and start having sexual relationships before times, others may prefer to wait. Another effect can be in how the boys, or the men, sees the girls, or women, since often we can see medias materializing the women putting them out there more as a sexual object rather than a women who also has the right to feel, this can also affect the way in how girls see their selves often falling for this idea that women is meant to serve the man and be sexy and sensual to be able to succeed or fit in a group, this last point in my opinion is a negative effect on how medias portrayed sexuality. Even though lately the medias have been more “open minded” to homosexual relationships and now we can see more homosexual couples in television series, movie films, models, and more often medias can influence with the fact that girls like boys and boys like girls rather than liking your own
gender. Even though the media can give a negative view of sexuality and give a wrong idea to adolescents I also believe that there is some positive aspects that they share to, such as letting them know that there it is just not having sex and that it but that there is consequences that cab really affect their future life, we often see shows where there show a young couple expecting a baby and all the difficulties they go through because they were not careful enough. Other topic that in my opinions is important is when the media “talks” about the effects and risks of contracting any kind of STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases) such as HIV, AIDS, human papilloma virus, herpes, and many more. Media did had a great impact in my sexuality, but I would say that it had both negative and positive, the negative would be is that I grew up with the idea that to be able to be sexy and beautiful I had to be very skinny and that I was supposed to serve the man and that since everybody was having sex, even on TV I had to do it to but after a while of thinking I decided that it was wrong and that actually what I was seeing was wrong too and that not because everybody was doing it I had to do it too and that actually it had many different consequences that may not be worth the act, such as living the rest of my life with a chronicle disease or bring a kid to the world that may suffer.
I believe that at this time it is very difficult to hide our kids from the world specially since it is very easy for them to access any kind of media and sooner or later they will go out in the world so rather than trying to change how media portraits sexuality we should let them know what they will see, what is accurate and what is not accurate, and also ask them how they feel about it, if it is wrong, or should we change it, just let them know that they can ask us anything they want instead of going to sources that may end up confusing them
more.
References
Adolescent sexuality and the media: a review of current knowledge and implications, Gruber Enid & W Grube Joel. (2000), Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/