Social Media And The First Amendment: What's Best For Children

Ashlynn Goodwin
Mr. Reed
ENGL 1213.027
16 February 2015
Social Media and the World Today If you observe people in today society many people are influenced by the extreme grasp of social media. “Marketing, Media, and the First Amendment: What’s Best for Children?” written by Susan Linn, talks about how advertising plays an important part of directly advertising to children. William Deresiewicz the author of “Faux Friendship”, writes about how friendships have been becoming more centralized through social media instead of being centralized through person. Lastly “Subculture and Style” written by Dick Hebdige discusses how culture, such as the corruption of social media, ties into everyday life. Although all three authors Linn, Deresiewicz,
Culture is the way people live every day. Culture is a part of who people are. In “Faux Friendship”, Deresiewicz discusses the value of friendships in ancient times, dating back to the Greeks. As time went on some friendships were formed by being godparents. Now friendships are formed through a social media connection. Deresiewicz 's point of view about these friendships is today 's friendships are not true friendships. True friendships, for example, would be going out to eat with a friend, socializing, going for a walk through a park together, and talking about little things that matter to each other. Instead, people ruin the moments with spending the time they have with friends by being on their phone searching through Instagram or posting a status on Facebook about the moment the friends are spending together. Dereiewicz says in his writing, “We haven’t just stopped talking to our friends as individuals, at such moments, we have stopped thinking them as individuals” (441). Friendships such as these are changing culture, they are no longer intimate because of the power social media holds over
Children do not have the experience or the intellectual concept they need to make important decisions. Therefore; businesses targeting children are not morally right to Linn. Many items not available to children such as, watching inappropriate movies, television shows, or rated mature video games. One item that was created to block inappropriate movies, television shows and rated mature video games is the v-chip. A v-chip is a device to allow parents to block television shows and movies from children. Even though the v-chip is invented it is not very affected. Not all of the parents use the v-chip or may not know of the chip. This problem already makes up a large percentage of the inappropriate movies and television shows being accessible to children. Another reason the v-chip is not very affected is some people that sell television do not know how to program these v-chips. This is a problem towards children because the media has somewhat of a control over the children through television. The media has for example foul language, nudity, and gun violence, which children watch and learn and become exposed to these. Hebdige wrote “Refracted through centuries of usage, the word has acquired a number of quite different, often contradictory, meanings” (377). These examples