Mass Media's Influence On The Younger Generation

Nowadays, mass media including the television, radio, and newspaper have a great influence on the people especially on the younger generation, which plays an important role in shaping the opinions and the positions of the younger generation. Livesey, (2011) stated, “mass media, therefore, refer to channels of communication that involve transmitting information in some way, shape or form to large numbers of people” (p.1). There are so many social problems in this modern world occur due to the mass media, for example the younger generation’s sexual behaviour as identified by The American Academy of Pediatrics (2011), that, the major public health crisis of the teens social activity is bright and helpless (p.191), (as cited in Wright, n.d, p.346)

Schlottmann and Wilkening (2011) stated, “accuracy of individual judgements, in contrast, or the question of how children might learn about specific probabilities, is not of major interest in this line of work” (p.8). This statement proved that the younger generations will lack the abilities to make accurate judgement of the benefits and harms of the information being fed to them. Thus, they will accept it consciously or unconsciously as the truth of life, not only influences the individual personality but also the other member. Moreover, The mass media will make the younger generation to less care about the religion, as they will be influenced by the mass media through the increasing of the social problem among them. This causing them to have a low living standard and do not having a comfortable life. Through irreligious, the younger generation will be easily deceived and oppressed by the surrounding communities. As the consequences, they will not be able to think and distinguish good and bad or right and wrong. Therefore, one of the bad influences of mass media is the younger generation will care less about

The broadcasters or the educators of the mass media will convey culturally a relevant and an educational message in order to have a good result, for example, a television as it is one of the mass media that can raise awareness, generate discussion and to promote the knowledge sharing. However, this idea is very lame as it can bring many negative initiatives towards the younger generations. Like for example when the younger generation did not reach their puberty yet, the television already begin their influences on youth life. Why does the television encourage the knowledge sharing if it bring many negative effects instead of positive effects? According to Vitagliano (2000), “a recent study suggests that television shows and advertisement can influence teenagers to drink (p.6). This shows that the mass media are not a reliable sources as it cannot help people in advancing the younger generation’s quality. Furthermore, mass media also are helpless in eradicating something bad from the society. As stated by Jagbir, “for example, after the attacks of 911 the media gave a huge coverage of the event and exposed Osama guilty for the attack as they were told by the authorities. This shaped the public opinion to support the war on terrorism, the same happened with the war on Iraq” (para. 1). Although the mass media providing some accurate information to the younger