Media's Negative Impact

Media has a great impact on culture and behavior. As I was visiting my grandmother’s house a few days back, I came to a realization of the influence of media on our culture on the young generation. The generation has majorly changed over the past ten years. I realized that media shaped the way they act, move and think. How so? Back in our childhood days, part of our tradition and culture was to play in the playground with our brothers and sisters or our neighbors. Our entertainment was never really indoors, and not much technology is involved in our free time. However, these days, we see children playing around with their new technologies such as iPads, iphones, Galaxy S3

. These material culture items got me thinking, has the tradition changed? Do these technologies avoid children to move around and to socialize with others. Another point that crossed my mind is that these new fancy technologies also made the children of this generation anti social. It limited their communications with others.Back in the days, children interacted with other children and played physical games such as football and basketball. On the other hand, children’s games these days are just on a technological device. In a sociological perspective, non-material culture is being affected in terms of behavior and language of this young generation. I realized my younger brother’s behavior and language changed since he started playing the wrestling games online. He became more violent, and so was his language. Some people say that media is a mirror of our culture, but however I do not believe so. It has added competition and pressure to girls especially. They would watch these advertisements and would starve themselves in order to look skinny. Media does not always have to be positive to our culture. It can negatively influence generations into behaving in a certain way. However, it can be debated that we are socially constructed into this living. Media and technology has become almost everything. It made things easier to a certain extent, but also allowed people to be anti social.