Mega Media

"The technique (of media) is wonderful. I didn't even dream it would be so good. But I would never let my children come close to the thing."

-Vladimir Zwory, developer of television, interviewed on his 92nd birthday.

Everyday in our lives, we interact with media-the ways of communicating or expressing information or ideas to people. There are many factors to how media has made our lives more simple; there are many advantages to it. However, not only is it helping us, but can also damage our lifestyles, and this is becoming a huge concern, especially for the teens and younger children. Kids and even infants are exposed to and interact with media, and this has bad effects on them on various ways. It's time we need to stand up and fight for the children's rights in being exposed to media which could be harmful to them.

The media which mostly boys make contact with a lot are violent video games, and studies have shown that playing violent video games can increase aggression. The brains of children who played and did not play violent video games were taken MRIs, and the results showed that the children who played violent video games showed a negative, lingering or permanent effect on their brains. Since violent video games can increase aggression if played, it is more likely that the use of violence will increase as children play more and more of it. It’s important to understand how risky it is to let kids get exposed to violent video games and how we need to fight for their rights to interact with the correct games or media.

The act of youth marketers marketing products more appropriate for teenagers to younger kids is called age compression, and this has brought a big impact to kids' lifestyles. Products which used to be marketed to 10-12 year olds are now being marketed to 7-8 year olds, and other products have also moved to be targeted to a younger level. One example is the magazine, Seventeen, which aren't read mostly by seventeen year olds but kids much younger than that. The bad consequences of age compression is that children get exposed to adult content, and that they develop ideas not about their childhood lifestyles such as playing outdoors, but worrying about their looks and what it means to be a man or a woman. Kids should be able to have freedom in their mental and physical ways until they grow up to be a certain age where they can grasp better knowledge of those things to apply it to their lifestyles.

As minutes, hours, days pass by, children are becoming more and more addicted to media, and the rate of health problems have increased massively over the last few years/decades. Too much interaction with media have caused many health problems such as obesity, hypertension, hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, depression, attention deficit and diabetes for the kids. In addition, kids now lack the ability of creative playing, because when they play with toys linked to media products, studies have shown that it leads to less creative, imitative play. Their lack of creativity might later lead to weaker academic progress than other children, and their health problems also might continue on for the rest of their lives if they’re not careful. Kids who are exposed a lot to media have their rights to be healthy and bright like other children their age who aren't exposed to mega media; and their rights are what we should fight for in order to help the children live a happy life.

It is absolutely not fair that children all over the world have to pay the price just for the marketers to make lucrative profit and be able to sell their products. They have freedom to live their lives freely and not get tied to media all the time. To make this happen, we need to fight for kids' rights in interaction with media. Children's health is worth fighting for. Children's freedom in both physical and mental minds is worth fighting for. The bad consequences they go through because they get exposed to too much media; that's worth fighting for.


For more information about media and how it affects children, click here.