Final Post: Sex and health in teens today & Reflections

With media playing such an important role in the lives of today’s teens, it is no wonder that many of the messages about teen sexuality come directly from the media they consume. The various form of media such as print media, electronic media and new age media has created devastating impact in society by portraying "sex" as a casual phenomenon and not something that one shloud abstain till marriage, particulary among the teenagers. Hence, teenagers now a days do not view sex as a taboo and hence leading to many unhealthy sexual activity in the world today.
Lets take online gaming (virtual world games) as one example, although it does develop creativity and help in spatial abilities in children, The iconography is very sexualized and the women who lure players into the games often sport lusty cleavage. Hence males may have a mindset that it is alright to lust for women and engage in unhealthy sexual relationship when they have the urge to. They are shaped by this form of media to lust and to think that they are in the virtual world.
The media's messages are impossible to avoid -- it is embedded in everything from reality TV to movies (virtually every R-rated movie aimed at teens has included at least one nude scene and, often, several sex scenes), to advertisements (over $300 million is spent each year on ads for erectile dysfunction drugs), to online and offline games and Facebook.
According to the latest Durex global sex survey, the average age of Singaporeans experiencing sex for the first time is 18.4. Considering that the average age of marriage is at least 10 years more, it's a safe assumption that a fair number of young people are engaging in pre-marital sex.

Kilbourne notes that sex in the media is often condemned "from a puritanical perspective—there’s too much of it, it’s too blatant, it will encourage kids to be promiscuous, etc." But, she concludes, sex in the media "has far more to do with trivializing sex than with promoting it. The problem is not that it is sinful but that it is synthetic and cynical. We are offered a pseudo-sexuality that makes it far more difficult to discover our own unique and authentic sexuality."

Alcoholism: Has Drinking become a social norm in teenagers?

This video showed us how alcohol is being taken for leisure and that it gives the mindset that it is alright for teenagers now a days to be binge drinking and having unhealthy relationship all the time.

Alcoholism is one of the sources of addiction for teens and adults, of the 20,000 commerials advertised yearly, 2,000 is strongly related to alcoholic content. Subliminally implanting into the minds of the youths that consumption of alcoholic beverage is a form of ritual transititioning from teen to adult which is heavily reflected today in American culture. (Victor, C. S. 2009). Although most children don't start drinking until the pre-teen or teen years, belief in media messages that drinking is a positive or desirable social activity is already developing since young. Children who receive little or no information about alcohol from other sources are most likely to believe the messages in alcohol advertisements.

Children and adolescents tend to learn more about alcohol from television and beer advertising than from more balanced sources such as parents, leaving them more knowledgeable about brands of beer than about potential health risks associated with drinking.
Drinking has been conceived to youths as a form of social norm, where people are encouraged to take up alcohol as a form of leisure activity etc. in parties or in clubs, adding to the problems of alcohol faced in the present world.

In conclusion, media plays a major part in portraying how society thinks about drinking and that these advertisers and companies have a single mindedness of profiting instead of looking at it healthily.

Eating disorders : To become supermodels?

From early-on children are taught by society that their looks matter.With an increased population of children who spend a lot of time in front of television, there are more of them coming up with a superficial sense of who they are. Images on television spend countless hours telling us to lose weight, be thin and beautiful, so that people will like us. Media rarely depicts men and women with "average" body-types , ingraining unconsciously in our minds that we must have the figure portrayed on television. Overweight characters are typically portrayed as lazy, the one with no friends, while thin women and pumped-up men are the successful, popular, and sexy. How can we tell our children that it's what's inside that counts, when the media continuously contradicts this message?

Increasingly, the media are seen as somehow responsible for the apparent growth of eating disorder. (Maggie, W. , Barrie, G. ,2005) Certainly the mass media are relatively modern phenomenon and their rise does seem parallel to the escalation of a kind of thin fascism. (Maggie, W. , Barrie, G. ,2005)
Today, you cannot read a magazine or newspaper, turn on the television, or shop at the mall without being assaulted with the message that fat is bad. By being constantly exposed, the mental development of you or your child gets distorted. Modelling agencies have been reported to actively pursue Anorexic models. Adolescents often feel fatally flawed if their weight, hips, and breasts do not match up to those of models and actors.Thus, there is an increasing number of people being on a diet, not eating proper meals and even taking pills to control hunger which in the long term leads to severe aneroxic cases and others too.

Furthermore,it is often portrayed that it is normal to be aneroxic because celebrities are doing it. http://www.skinnyland.com/blog/category/anorexic/ . For example : Jessica Alba In 2005, Jessica admitted that she used to have an eating disorder. She talked about how it was because she grew up in a family that was overweight, so she had always wanted to be skinnier. Is anorexic a MUST have phase in everyone's life?

In conclusion, Preventing eating disorder is clearly an issue that everyone will need to do more for. The media needs to play a more responsible role on the images shown to our impressionable younger generations.

References

Maggie, W. , Barrie, G. ,(2005).The media and body image;if looks could kill. Sage publications.

http://www.casapalmera.com/blog/top-10-celebrities-with-eating-disorders/

Health VS Media ( Is Media portraying health or early death?)

The marketing of junk food and fast food has become big business—some have called the food industry the next Tobacco.
Companies have been spending millions in advertisement to raise great awareness among the public of their products and frequently these advertisements become the main purpose and source of revenue of many of the media channels. Advertisements for junk food and fast food can also be seen in , movies ,magazines, Shopping malls , the Internet, and even in our transportations services. What impact is this having on youth and adults? Is this what we are going to see in the future?

(Google Pictures)

In the 21st century , most people have access to various form of media such as television or the internet.Teens and younger children are particularly exposed a lot to TV advertisement, and at their age they are more likely to be carried away by the hidden emotional appeal of the advertisement.The media has been advertising on how fast food seems to be so colourful and healthy but in actual fact it is not. One example, is the use of a meat quality enhancer, or a product known scientifically as ammonium hydroxide which turns fatty beef residue into a mixture that has been non-affectionately called "pink slime". These advertisement plays a part in enticing people of all ages, without realizing that their choices are being manipulated by the advertisement.Through the growing numbers of advertisement the fast food industry is making, it further emphasise the greatness of their products. One good example is public posters and public televisions, people tend to be conditioned by these advertisements! One example we can relate to is movies and popcorns. Some people might argue that both must go together! Research has shown colourful advertisement are eye catching and stays in the memory of a person longer (The advertised mind: ground-breaking insights into how our brains respond to advertising, Kogan Page Publishers, 28 May, 2005 )and therefore many people will subconciously walk into a fast food restaurant,which is detrimental to one's health in the long run. According to National Healthy Lifestyle (NHS) statistics, the prevalence of obesity among adults in Singapore between 18 and 69 years increased steadily from 6.0% in 1998, and to 6.9% in 2004 and to 10.4% in 2010. Therefore, the media has been moving in a direction that is only focused on profit making instead of the publics health.

In conclusion, the collaboration of the advertising industry and the media has influenced the people's diet to a certain extent that is detrimental in the long run. Clearly, the conclusion is drawn is that media and advertisement can influence children's purchases as those of their families.

References

Erik, D.P. (2005) The advertised mind: ground-breaking insights into how our brains respond to advertising, Kogan Page Publishers.

http://www.hpb.gov.sg/news/article.aspx?id=6264