Media Literacy

The Invasion of the Media

Media literacy is a delicate issue that affects everyone in today’s society. Media influences our lives in many different aspects. This essay will include discussions concluded by researchers around the world such as Anderson, Craig A., Leonard Berkowitz, and Edward Donnerstein, Bird Steve, Fisherkeller, J,, Freedman, Jonathan L., Mendoza, K, Mock, Karen, and Lisa Armony, Shap, Daniel. These researchers on media literacy have found various types of effects on education and health related issues, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, body image, obesity, nutrition, eating disorders, illness, sex, distraction, lack of knowledge, decrease of interest in a number of educational subjects, such as reading, writing, math, science, and all types of sports. These researchers suggest a need for higher expectations in present students and future students. This research paper will be limited to media literacy dealing with health, education, drug issues, and race related issues. Media basically controls society in many ways however, this pattern can be changed with more government regulations against the media and changing the lifestyle of people in today’s society.

Media is wrapping up the world with technological devices that take communication into a level that reaches every single person in the world, especially young people these individuals are overwhelmed with media messages in their every move and in their everyday lives. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (1999), in the United States children on average spend 5.5hours per day, seven days a week outside of school work, engaging with media (such as television, internet, radio, magazines, newspapers, CDs, DVDs, books, video games). Three hours each day are spent watching television, and at this rate by the time a person reaches the age of 75 he or she will have spent nine full years of watching TV and two years watching TV advertisements

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(Kubey,1998, 2004, 2005). Humanity is being hypnotized with television shows, movies, commercials, cartoons, video games, and news. The World Wide Web distributes information like a disease; it gives people the wrong thoughts and information that affect many people around the world with misunderstandings that build up to racism in every aspect and ignorance, about unsolved issues in every country around the world. Media acts on the way people socialize in every aspect; media is now taking control of society in various different important ways now that media runs all over the world. For example media influences the way we act, dress, look, and think. According to Karen Mock the Internet is the world's fastest growing means of telecommunications. Therefore the internet is connected to all the unimaginable communication devices all over the earth and wrapped up in human hands. Communication can come in a positive but also a very negative way that can cause society to build hate against each other because of lack of understanding in the issue and judgment. For example post a world wide comment about any form of group such a cultural, religious, sex, or political. It might be a negative comment that may affect a large group of people