The nature of the media and its effect on children is something that has changed very during the past decade or so. With marketing now commonly targeted to children in the hopes of hooking life-long customers in the name of brand loyalty, children are now one of the top demographics for ad companies. The targeting of adult-themed products to kids is a byproduct of these kinds of marketing strategies, and as a result I believe we are seeing some unfortunate consequences, especially in little girls.
How many of the idols we see on television are good influences on our children? An unfortunate result of our worker-bee society is that children are educated by the media more than they probably should be. A parent’s duty should be to educate their children; to at least lead their kids in the right direction for the first dozen or more years of their life so they may make the right decisions later on. Instead we turn to television as a primary means of education. Our girls are barraged with images of their idol acting in ways I will only refer to as “unfortunate”. Many of the most famous and idolized figures in the media are those who became famous by being marketed to children. Miley Cyrus, Lindsey Lohan and Britney Spears are three great examples: children love them on stage, and in the real world these are the archetypes of the women I explicitly hope to avoid raising. Their continued fame in large is a result of the media obsessively covering them and pushing them upon the public. Our children's major role models are the people we explicitly don’t want them to be.
And this only takes into account media targeted toward children. Let’s look at entertainment for the in-between crowd: ages 15-25. Some of the hottest shows right now include Jersey Shore and The Real Housewives but there are a slew of shows at the moment with this basic theme of the ritzy, glamorous lives of upper-class adults who act like retarded children. Many of us watch these and laugh at these fools; there is a morbid curiosity that comes along and they can be thoroughly entertaining. This is great for those who know what they’re seeing, however, there is a generation of kids who watch these programs and actually look up to characters such as Snookie. A culture of materialism, promiscuity and asinine behavior and most scarily of all, the pride many have for holding these character traits has developed as a result. There are a large group of children who don’t understand the merit in developing virtuous character because of the repeated drilling of the warped idea of womanhood into fragile young minds. The most frightening thing to me is the fact that even through good parenting one might still lose the mind of a child to this drivel. For my own children, I will do my best to equip them with tools and mental capacity to understood and willingly dissent from the mass brainwashing the media will throw at them their entire lives, and you should do the same.
