Causal Analysis Argument About the Media

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Causal Analysis Argument about the Media David ODonnell Liberty University English 101 D04 APA Format B.S. of Psychology Advertisement is everywhere. Storefronts, billboards, mail, radio and television proposition the ears and eyes of every single person in the United States today. Everybody has something to sell and how will it be purchased if nobody knows about it? At its best, advertisement opens up a world of opportunity for a prospective buyer; at its worst it becomes a constant deluge, an assault on the very fabric of an individual. Ad (Watterson, 1992) Figure 1. Excessive advertisement influences the attitudes that children have towards gratification, and it defines what fulfillment means to them. American children receive perhaps the most concentrated doses of advertisement through the overabundance of visual media available at their fingertips. According to the University of Michigan Health Systems website, children 2-5 spend an average of 32 hours per week in front of a TV. Children ages 6-11 spend an average of 28 hours a week watching television (2010). With that much exposure surely it has major effects on unknowing youth. Children are impressionable and immature with a limited capacity to make sound logical decisions. Add to that the crushing force of a multitude of multi-national companies all trying to push their product on the most vulnerable members of our society, and a major ethical problem with long lasting consequences appears. A person’s mental images and language create his or her sense of selfhood. And this selfhood-especially during our formative years-is the most valuable, fragile quality we’ll ever embrace. Private, vulnerable, and sacred, a human being’s psyche is not a commodity to be sold. But it happens, every day, for millions of American kids (Fox, 1996). These companies know this, because they
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