Assignment 2. Literature Review

The Influences of Media on Users

Since the introduction of radio and television, our modern lives have embraced the prosperity of media use with TV shows, game shows, video games, movies, and music. They become essential parts of our lives. With concerns of their influences on us, many studies have demonstrated the good effects, harmful effects, also suggested solutions to maximize the healthy impacts, and minimize the unhealthy ones.

From the beginning of media use – radio and television broadcasting – David Sarnoff, President of The Radio Corporation of America, New York glamorized the potential effects of television which could offer human-beings distance eyesight. People would be able to extend their visions in far-away lands that they couldn’t visit yet; therefore, they would see and widen their knowledge quickly. Television, combined with radio invention, empowered humankind in exchanging his voice and image to others all over the world. The enchanting of radio had brought incredible aural effects from music, story-telling, instant-news to everyone; yet the strength of visibility helped enhance emotions of drama, live news, and on-going sporting events. Radio-television lifted people to cultural development with good music, dancing, painting, and drama. Politicians would also have effective means to send their messages to citizens with their active motions and persuading data from charts. Marine and airplane had better night-views alongside clear instruction voices. Radios and televisions brought up the need of freedom to discuss and to be treated fairly for everyone. Thanks to these first media inventions, students could have interesting sound-motion lessons in their classes. With all of those helpful impacts, the author predicted that radio and television would become vital elements of our modern lives.

Until now, “new media” offered by radio, television, newspapers, smartphones, note-pads, and Internet are carrying good varieties of articles, music, movies, shows, and video games. They have indeed become important parts of our lives with convenience and advantage. Empirical results consistently have pointed out lots of benefits from media use, such as: fostering knowledge, connectedness, and health information. As pediatricians, Victor C. Strasburger, M.D and Marjorie J. Hogan, M.D emphasized in their research that screen media, such as educational shows and pro-social media, could help children learn numbers and letters, teach them empathy, show them different cultural perspectives, and other interpersonal skills. Likewise, networking sites were a place for making new friends and meeting the old ones; YouTube media and text messages could send us positive information for our health, life-style, and advices. Furthermore, Heather L Kirkorian, et al. wrote that many studies had proved well-designed, age-appropriate, educational, and moderating television viewing were positively associated to academic performance and cognitive skill development. Such programs were able to teach children specific attention skills and strategies. They also encourage them to gain higher levels of school readiness, and offer ways for them to achieve more successful and systematic problem solutions.

Moreover, to investigate the good effects of video games experience on children’s spatial skills, Kaveri Subrahmanyam and Patricia M. Greenfield have conducted an experiment with fifth graders. There was a group playing a spatial game, navigating a marble along tracks through space, and another control group playing computerized word game that was not spatial. They found significantly higher post-test scores for the spatial video game group than for the control group. That indicated spatial video games helped improve spatial performance. Besides, sexual contents on media also have good uses in sexual education.

Discussion of sexual matters on media, in the book Children, Adolescents, and the Media, the authors figured that some shows depicted responsible characters with the issue of teenage sexual activity and pregnancy; the other shows contained conversations of mother and son about responsibility and birth control. In the absence of effective sex education at home or school, the media have become important sources of sexual information for adolescents. According to these authors’ opinions, screen media would become a good friend.  However, different voices out there argued about the other side of media use’s effects, the ugly influences.

Agarwal Vivek, Ph.D and Saranac Dhanasekaran, Ph.D suggested that heavy media viewing has negative impacts on children and adolescents, such as violence and aggression, substance use, health problems, and early sexual initiation. According to The National Television Study, children and adolescents who have watched huge amount of violent scenes are more likely to suffer antisocial effects. Children with more exposure to advertisements of alcohol tend to drink as an adult, and hold a positive belief toward alcohol consumption. More than half of adolescents smoking initiation has related to watching people smoking in movies or music videos. Unfortunately, children and adolescents eat more unhealthy foods for attractive advertisements. They lack skills in interaction with their peers and thereby encounter the risk of isolation, anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or depression in young adulthood. Although portrayal of sexual materials have been increasing dramatically (fifty percent of shows, sixty-six percent of prime-time shows), there are limited information about risks related to early sexual initiation, unwanted pregnancy, STDs, and contraception (only nine percent). Moreover, inappropriate contents in the Internet and photo posting on networking sites are also potential risks of early sexual initiations.

Examining violence effect of media use on human-being, as stated in their study, Brad J. Bushman and L. Rowell Huesmann demonstrated some shocking results: Violent media was a crucial factor causing people to commit acts of violence, to be afraid of becoming a victim of violence, and to be insensitive to the pain of the others. These effects remained over time. This research proved that children exposing to media with violent contents would become more aggressive adult; especially with boys, with eighteen percent of them could possibly use knifes or guns, and significantly have tendency to be arrested for a crime. Excessive violent media viewer who exposed to media at least four hours per day was more fearful of being a victim of violence. He or she probably wouldn’t believe in the others and perceive his or her surroundings as a dangerous place. This fear could begin early in childhood. They might gradually become more indifferent to the pain and suffering of others, and show less sympathy to violence’s victims. They were less willing to help victims of violence for they thought the victim’s injuries were not that bad, as they held aggressors’ perspective.

Regarding the association between media use and sexual matters, Bryant Jennings and Steven C. Rockwell, who are Professors of The University of Alabama, conducted a study in which young adolescents watched fifteen hours of sexual contents depicting unmarried people, later these subjects judged such situation as less morally wrong, and became more approving of sexual adulteries or improprieties. This study indicated that young teenagers who had exposure to prime-time television programs portraying sexual intimacy between unmarried individuals could result in changing moral judgment. Keren Eyal and Dale Kunkel also confirmed the finding of Bryant Jennings and Steven C. Rockwell that exposure to sexual content on television could influence young adults’ sexual attitudes and moral judgments. Their study revealed two other aspects: the portrayal of negative consequences of sex can affect more negative attitudes about and perceptions of sexual activity; and viewing negative outcome leads to significantly more negative moral judgment of characters. Moreover, the result indicated that such effects could persist beyond the immediate viewing situation and over a two-week period. Young adults who watched negative consequences would be less likely to imitate the behavior, in order to avoid suffering consequences similar to those experienced by the characters. Whereas, there was not a significant change in attitude or moral, judgment of participants in positive consequence conditions change. This was possible for well-established effects on participants, who had daily exposed such predominated positive outcomes on televisions, as the pretest had showed their positive attitudes and moral judgments.

Meanwhile, researchers are having great concerns about the association between increasing media use and health problem.

In order to take advantage of the healthy effects of media use, and minimize the harmful ones, Jennings Bryant and Steven C. Rockwell suggested that there were three important factors a family should employ: having clearly and well-defined family value system in which teenagers can know and use media products; having free and open discussions of issues; encouraging active critical viewing, active viewing and analysis program content in teenagers. Also, Heather L. Kirkorian, et al. recommended parents should become active co-viewer and moderator; media producers should integrate narrative and educational contents as much as possible. Victor C. Strasburger, M.D and Marjorie J. Hogan, M.D had some recommendations: First, pediatricians and healthcare providers should ask questions about media use history, particularly children with obesity, aggressive behaviors, difficulties at school, or who are overweight, and provide counseling for families at every well-child visit. Second, parents should have limitations and monitor contents of media use. Third, schools should be well educated about risks associated with unsupervised and unlimited media use, foster the benefits of media use and encourage innovations, cooperate with parents and teachers to apply rules and instruct children to use media appropriately. Fourth, entertainment industry should maximize prosocial contents and lessen harmful effects, also adjust marketing activities with health concerns. And at last, federal government should advocate for researches on the impacts of media, issue strong regulations in entertainment industry, on alcohol and tobacco advertisements and children products, work with Department of Education to utilize the benefits of media use in curriculums.

In accordance with faceted opinions of this discussion, media has brought up goods and harms. People can use media to gain and exchange knowledge, to communicate with others, to enrich their cultures and perspectives, thus build up a better society. On the other hand, media use can also affect our physical and mental health; children are especially the most affected. There are always better resolutions to handle all of it. As smart media users, should we consider a solution for ourselves?