Media's Influence On Youth

Teen star Miley Cyrus smoking a blunt

In today’s world, people have a tendency to find role models in pop culture, and things they like or enjoy. Role models are found on reality t.v. shows, cartoons, magazines, or even the news. The effect the media has on how people act is really quite frightening. The media has led to young teens dieting to look more like celebrities, people self harming to feel a connection with their favorite singers, doing drugs and drinking alcohol because their favorite rapper talks about it, smoke cigarettes because movie stars always do, and so many other examples. For some of these people, specifically rap stars, many of them only rap about this stuff to create an image without actually drinking or using these drugs, but young audiences don’t know any better. I think this problem isn't addressed enough, stars shouldn't have to completely clean up their lives for our viewing, we should control what our families watch, or more importantly, what kind of news we should actually have broadcasted on local news channels.

Local news, and even CNN, has done a new bit about the recent Miley Cyrus performance, but is that really so important that CNN does a report on it? I think that celebrity news like that should not be prioritized.