Mass media has been shaping reality ever since the invention of the printing press and moveable type. Mass media today is now available by print, radio, television, and internet. This way we are provided with the basic information from which people from their understandings of the world around them. Without the media, our reality and knowledge of events wouldn’t extend far from beyond the towns in which we live. The mass media has a great way of dictating what topics people learn, think, and talk about. In this way, the media plays a major role in creating and shaping society's opinion as a whole.
In our society, the vast majority of people only know what is happening in the world because of the media that is being presented to us. For the most part, we have no way of verifying everything which is presented to us by the media. The media has an authoritative role to give us news, entertainment and education therefore we put our trust in it and will often assume the information to be true. Even if the information is true, the media organization presenting it is only giving us one perspective of the truth. The limitation in this is that this biased view of the world gives most people a very limited picture of the truth, giving us little opportunity to consider alternative perspectives which may also be true.
On television thousands of commercials are shown where they advertize products, fast food restaurants and clothing. Fast food commercials such as Popeye’s and Burger King like to attract people with their delicious, juicy, tender looking chicken and the yummy burgers and fries. People are eating more fast foods and it is getting harder for them to turn away and eat healthy. Obesity, high cholesterol, and diabetes are becoming a major problem for people today.
The mass media has a great affect on teens in our society. Magazines are where you can find the latest fashion trends and the newest updates on celebrities. Rappers in the media have the tendency to sag their pants causing teen and even adult males to sag their pants. Pant sagging may seem cool to them, but it is unattractive to most. What most don’t know is that the style derived from prison where men didn’t have belts to hold their pants up, causing sagging to occur. How can men be taken seriously to the public when their pants are basically on the ground? Teen girls have the tendency to want to look like the celebrities they see in the magazines. Our media gives off the impression that you have to be skinny or fit in order to be beautiful. Therefore teen females end up starving themselves and trying to lose weight in unhealthy ways in order to portray their celebrity role models. As a result anorexia and bulimia are on the rise. Icons like Tyra Banks like to promote being beautiful in your own skin and size. This is the type of motivation that teens in our society need.
