Passage 24. Of Media
International media such as TV network and magazine always give people in an information age mixed feelings. Like many other things, media is double-edged. As primary channels of information, TV and magazine are convenient and economic sources of information for knowledge, entertainment, and shopping. Interestingly,sometimes the same piece of information varies considerably
in its influences on audiences of different age. For example,in a TV commercial,a beautiful lady promotes a certain brand of perfume, which supposablely makes girls more attractive to boys. For potential grown-up buyers, the ad is useful because they might be spending time searching for such products. We save time in shopping and making decision by making use of such advertisements. However, a teenage girl might get the wrong idea about the concept of perfume. She could get money from her parents to buy the advertised product. Worse yet, she might use the appeal strategy employed in the commercial to get ahead in the future.
This is classic bad influence of media for young people’s overspending and inappropriate behaviors.However, we find it very difficult to weigh between merits and problems of media because they are often tightly incorporated. For instance, violent scenes in movies are believed to be partially responsible for violence-related crimes, particularly those committed by young people. But on the contrary,such movies also give people a channel to release their anger,anxiety, and pressure. Moreover,these movies show us bad and evil as well as punishments for wrongdoings. Imagine we live in a world whose media is completely clean in such sense. The dark side of media does not disappear just because we do not talk about it. Nevertheless certain kinds of information such as porn are better kept away from young people. In conclusion, media should not be seen simply as bad or good because we need to use information properly to the best of our ability. But for certain segments of viewers, we should be very careful with regard to the content of information and take measures to keep viewers from possible harmful influences of media.