Media Role Models and the Effect on Children

Media construct our culture, and the media we use to communicate with one another shapes our perception of reality. Our society is centered on media, it is the most influential factor in constructing our culture, but is it a positive culture? If we examine the effect that media has on children, we can say that it breeds a harmful culture, one that throws values and morals out the window. This is because the media is profit driven and has developed its own code of ethics of "anything-goes". As a result, children are exposed to things that they should not necessarily be exposed to yet and as a result it rushes their mental development and in fact moulds their mentality. This is a scary fact because these children's minds are susceptible to the trickery of those who run the media. With the media luring in the children, they are able to sell their own value system to the kids through actors, cartoon characters, and even musicians who are puppets in the media's propaganda. They in turn tend to become role models to the kids and can influence the children and manipulate their behavior, their fragile minds, and value system as they try to emulate their Role Models. Developmental psychology and children's marketing have a long history of close alignment, so media personalities such as actors, musicians and cartoon characters play a major role in shaping a child's mindset, and with the kind of images that these people portray it is not necessarily the best type of thing that we should expose children to.

First of all we must understand why these media personalities appeal to children, what makes them so popular and why children emulate them. All children from the ages of 12 and under, and teenagers all try to fit in with different social groups of other children, in essence they all try to be Ð''cool' so that they would be liked and accepted into the social group by other kids. All children have their insecurities of not being liked and accepted by others, so they try to be cool, and with the media being the major factor that shapes our culture, it too creates the definition of cool. Children, through the media are subjected to unremitting pressure to conform to the market's definition of cool. Those in charge of the cartoons, films and music, create this definition of cool; they are the ones who turn these actors who are normal people into popular icons and superstars who are idolized by the public, in this case children. Because the media is profit driven those in charge try to create a demand for their products, which are their movies, cartoons or music, so they employ all kinds of techniques to sell their products to their target market, which happens to be children. So these people in charge of the media houses, the broadcast stations, record labels, and movie producers must make their product appeal to the children using a variety of techniques. They cannot have their actors, cartoon characters or musicians seem like regular people like you and me, they have to turn them into Gods, so that children who have not yet developed critical minds would idolize them, look up to them, and strive to be just like them. One technique that the executive bodies in charge of the media personalities utilize to make them appeal to children is to play off of their insecurities of not being accepted or fitting in with other kids. This is a widely used technique in the media industry employed by everyone who tries to sell a product, they try to make you feel inadequate and that your life would be better if you purchased their product, in the case with children, this is done by trying to sell them Ð''cool'. The people who promote the media personalities try to make them appear cool to children, who would then emulate them on the grounds that they have the cool factor that they themselves lack and need to fit in with others. Once the media bodies are able to catch a child by hooking them on one of their cartoons, movies, or music they are to sell a variety of products based on the cartoon character, actor, or musician. For example, "Spongebob" a popular children cartoon has a variety of products out on the market that are purchased by parents for their kids based on the fact that kids like the Spongebob character. Another example we could look at is Britney Spears, young girls who like Britney Spears think that she is Ð''cool' and thus they strive to be just like her, and this involves acting like Britney and more importantly buying Britney Spears products such as her clothing. So in conclusion these media personalities are popular among children and idolized by them because they are promoted as being cool and for a child to be cool they must be just like them, which involves buying their products. These media personalities are in essence products themselves that the media bodies try to sell to children on the basis of Ð''cool', and once they can be sold to the children as being cool, their entire franchise benefits because their image can create the demand for all products with their likeness.

Now let's look at the effect that these media personalities have on children in the age group 5 and under. We assume that children are safe watching educational programming such as "Blue's Clues", "Dora the explorer" and "Teletubbies", but are they really as safe as we think they are. First off, these types of television shows are educational and do in fact teach young children while keeping them entertained. This can be seen as a positive influence on our kids and these characters as being positive role models because they share with others, get along well with the other characters, do positive things such as reading and learning, and avoid the negative aspects of society such as alcohol, smoking and drugs. From this perspective one can assume that it is safe to let children watch these types of programs, however they may still carry subliminal themes that are inappropriate for children. Sometimes those behind these children programs could be exposing children to adult themes by putting it into a kid-friendly format. For instance, I was watching "Teletubbies" with my little cousin who was four years old and the teletubbies were playing with a shirt and playing that they were girls, when in fact they were male characters. They were also telling the kids watching to join them in wearing a skirt and skipping merrily around as girls. My little cousin who happened to be a boy didn't know that only girls should wear skirts, when he asked his mother for a skirt to play along with the teletubbies his mother got very upset at what show he was watching that would have him wanting to prance around as a girl in a skirt, and when she found out that it was "Teletubbies" she got upset and stopped