Whose responsibility is it to stop the influence cycle? It's everyone’s!

Why don’t big media corporations stand by their claim that they care about their adolescent audience and provide a greater message of health and responsibility to all individuals? Would teenagers ignore their pleas to not smoke? Would adolescents engage in sex anyway even if it wasn’t on TV 24/7 or would they listen to the media when they say you should wear a condom or practice abstinence? Why are adolescents so influenced by the media?

In short, the media doesn’t protect the interests of adolescents because they don’t have to. According to Robert Hinkley, a corporation, (like media giant AOL Time Warner) is “a specific legal form of organization of persons and material resources, chartered by the state, for the purpose of conducting business” (Hinkley, 2002, p.1). There is a certain provision to corporation laws that states that the sole duty of a corporation is to make money for its investors. No mention is made of responsibility to public interest. In other words, social issues like human rights do not fall within a corporation’s legal mandate, so they don’t have to worry about promoting anti-smoking, safe sex, and responsible suicide reporting (Hinkley, 2002). Here, we basically have a case of laziness at its worst.

If media corporations can make money selling beer, which is a $346 million industry, (Ahrens, 2002) why would they miss out on this?

You can certainly make more money selling beer than you can selling messages to avoid drunk driving and to drink responsibly.

And why should teenagers worry about how they act if their behavior is shown on TV? The media is created by adults, so if adults are publicizing teenage behavior, it must be for a good reason, right?

Overall, the media clearly has a monumental affect on things we do in our every day lives. In the course of one day, we see more advertisements and explicit content than we realize. We see TV shows like “The OC” and “Desperate Housewives” encouraging pre- and extra- marital sex all the time.

But are these shows an accurate portrayal of what adolescents are like? What are your favorite shows? Are your favorite characters anything like you? What do you want society to know about adolescents that they may not know? Is it fair that media corporations make billions of dollars on endlessly inculcating certain messages into the bright, young minds of teens?

It is clear from what we’ve said here that the media affects everything we do, from smoking to sex and even to suicide. Everyone seems to want to blame each other for the vicious cycle of behavior-media-behavior-media. Clearly, this is getting us nowhere. It is everyone’s responsibility to put a halt to the vicious influence cycle. What will you do to help?