Television Generation

4 Pages 964 Words

Television Generation
There is no doubt that the media had always had some influence on the public and the shared values of the American people. However, in the last decade there has been a substantial increase in the extent of that influence. In 1996 a study conducted by the National Institute on Media and the Family illustrated how new this powerful influence is. The survey states that in the 1970’s “less than 50 percent of parents believed that the mass media influenced the attitudes and values of their children.” (Plugged In and Tuned Out). Thirty years later that number has drastically changed. The National Institute on Media and the Family says that, “Today, an overwhelming majority of parents, some 88 percent, believe that mass media have a pervasive influence,” on their children. These statistics show that the media unquestionably has a lot of power in shaping our generation, which gives them an immense about of responsibility. In turn, our generation has become a highly conscious community of young people concerned with unimportant beliefs and ideas. The cinema, magazines, and advertisements are all to blame for transferring these meaningless thoughts into our heads, hence the title “Television Generation.”
There have been many changes in American culture and in the extent of the media’s influence over the public over the last thirty to forty years. The media’s influence has expanded as a result of the greater access people have to various media forms. In the 1950s only 10% of American homes owned a television set. By the 1960s almost 90% of homes had a television; this is quite a large increase. Today, over 99% of homes have a television and 54% of children in the United States have a television set in their bedrooms. It has also been reported that many American households have more televisions than telephones. (Baby Bag – Nielson Media Research). This shows that the children and adolesce...