The Effect of Hollywood on Youth

Adolescents and young adults gain a portion of their sense of self from the movies they

Children are avid followers of entertainment, but they don’t realize the harm it brings to them. Since children are impressionable, they are easily influenced by other sources and entertainment becomes a big part of their lives. They attempt to imitate stunts seen on T.V. and are desensitized by the multiple accidents in shows. Kids could start to believe that they can be the same as the characters. For example, a child who watches Neverland might believe

Hollywood has created so many movies to promote deviant behavior. There are many reasons why Hollywood uses deviant behavior. People in Hollywood use deviant behavior for entertainment by producing and filming movies that people will actually enjoy. They don’t make scary movies just to scare the bejeezus out of you, they produce it because people take time out of their life to watch a scary movie and enjoy the goosebumps you get from mysterious things happening. When tv shows are being aired on tv or movies in a theatre are being played commercials pay to have their very own commercials during the tv or movie because they want the movies to become popular and have more people interested in taking time to watch it. Most of the movies or tv shows are targeting elderly people, kids, teens, and even adults.

The MPAA’s movie rating system has been progressively allowing movies to teach children immoral values and something must be done to fix this. The different topics on which the MPAA base their ratings on have skewed standards. One

Films have the power to both influence and reflect society. The stereotypes prevalent throughout American culture are reflected in most films. While the United States is becoming an increasingly diverse country, this diversity is not portrayed within American cinema. Minority figures often occupy

Violence in movies needs to be decreased. When has it been okay to promote violence? We want to teach our kids that violence is never the answer. Then why have children watch movies that show violence in a presumptuous way? Statistics show that violence has reduced in the last 10 years, but the rate of violent crimes is still too high. Kaplan says, “Nearly two-thirds of TV programs contain some physical violence”(Kaplan). Any type of violence can play a role in the mental corruption of a person. The physical violence can take the biggest toll on someone. If someone watches physical violence from a movie, they could

The negative portrayal of teenagers in the media is too much for their developing brains to handle and it needs to stop now – Nikola Ajdarević

The media has a way of influencing people of all ages. Specifically, violence and horror in the media are the most debated. Why do people go to watch violent movies or horror movies? They go for entertainment without realizing the physical or mental effects. Kathy Benjamin’s “5 Scientific Ways Watching Movies Effects You” and Bernie DeGroat’s “Scary Movies Can Have Lasting Effects on Children and Teens” both mention the negative effects of movies, especially horror movies, with research or studies. However, only one of the essays, “5 Scientific Ways Watching Movies Effects You,” mentions some positive effects. Statistics have shown that watching these type movies can have short and long term repercussions.

Throughout the past few decades, the media has been a very sturdy driving force in directing and controlling social beliefs and behaviours. This is explained in the New York Times opinion column, "It's Racist, But Hey, It's Disney." Children are more vulnerable to the powers of the media. Disney movies are also a vehicle for spreading cultural notions, such as racism. This medium opens an avenue where children can be indoctrinated and pass questionable values on to following generations.

Saturday morning cartoons contain twenty to twenty-five violent acts per hour (Stranger & Gridina, 1999). Pediatricians warn that media violence can be especially damaging to children under age eight because they cannot readily tell the difference between real life and fantasy. Many violent acts are perpetrated by the "good guys," whom kids have been taught to emulate. Even though kids are taught by their parents that it's not right to hit, television says it's OK to bite, hit, or kick if you're the good guy. This can lead to confusion when kids try to understand the difference between right and wrong. And even the "bad guys" on TV aren't always held responsible or punished for their actions (Nemours, 1995-2009). “These violent behaviors are learned,” said Dr. Slutkin (Herbert, 2010, p. 1). “They are largely formed by modeling, the almost unconscious copying of one another (Herbert, 2010, p. 1). And then they are maintained by the social pressure of peers (Herbert, 2010, p. 1). It becomes normal to reach for a gun (Herbert, 2010, p. 1). TV is full of programs and commercials that depict behaviors such as sex and substance abuse as cool, fun, and exciting. Studies have shown that teens who watch lots of sexual content on TV are more likely to initiate intercourse or participate in other sexual activities earlier than peers who don’t watch sexually explicit

Nowadays, people all around the world learn and get their influence from mass media. Also, America is the country that has the most access to any mass media. However, mass media type like PG-13 rated movies have been in question for triple gun violence contents since 1985 (Wilson & Hudson 2013). In 2012, the contents of gun violence appeared in PG-13 rated movies exceeded to the contents in R-rated movies ( Bushman 2013: 1017). Since the movies were rated as PG-13, children who are younger than 13 years old can easily have access to the violence contents in the films ( Bushman 2013: 1017). By exposing violence contents in PG-13 rated movies, young teenagers might act out those violence materials in real life. In addition, PG-13 rated movies earn 45% market share with high-grossing movies (Wilson & Hudson 2013).

This may alter children to act violently in order to keep up with the norms they are being presented by influential, popular celebrities.

As a seven year old I stumbled across a trailer for a new horror movie. I can’t remember the title, and I can’t remember the story, but to this day when it’s late at night and the house is silent I can sometimes hear the click click click of the creature’s long nails on my window. The things you see as a child can stay with you, as the monster did with me, so it’s no surprise that there is a such controversy over the topic of censorship in the media. Ultimately this issue can be boiled down to it being the parent’s responsibility to censor the graphic media their children have access to and not the responsibility of the content creators or a different force such as the MPAA, after all, a

If parents restrict their children in only watching educational shows rather than violence, the influence of children would rather be more useful and not corrupted.

Television, music, video games, and other form of media are all things that are fun and sometimes educational for kids, but can be a bad influence on children, depending on the content. These all should be used to teach children how to solve problems and expand their mind, rather than teaching them to kill people and portraying someone negatively. The images and stories shown to children and teenagers make it difficult