Twenge states, “To many older people, it’s funny. But too many younger people the main consumers of the reality shows on, say, MTV it shapes their views of the world” (pg 7). Narcissism is shown often, and without hesitation on reality TV younger viewers are being conditioned by the depiction of narcissism. Slowly, the excess amount of narcissism seems normal. For instance, on “America’s Next Top Model” young viewers wish to be thin, tall, and overall a model, but go about it in the wrong ways.
Now with the birth of realty TV the younger generation is exposed to deviant behavior on a regular basis. A prime example of glorifying deviant behavior would be the show The Bad Girl’s Club. On this show a houseful of young women of different ages get together to so called better themselves. Throughout the entire season they fight, curse, and sleep with people they just met. This gives young viewers an outlet to be like well they ended up on TV doing all the things we are not supposed to do.
It seems to me that throughout the years TV has become more popular, and most people have at least one TV in their house. Comparing Fahrenheit 451 to our world exposed how close we are to becoming like them. With the government controlling us, ad our addiction to TV; we have to battle against ourselves to prevent becoming like the world of 451. We do have our differences to 451, because we do not burn books. I find it I retesting that Bradbury wrote this book in 1953 and does an excellent job at predicting what todays society would be like.
Television shows and movies often try to portray what high school life is really like. Though high school can be a dramatic time, it is just not quite as dramatic as television portrays it. In the movie “Mean Girls”, we follow the story of 16-year-old Cady Heron, as she makes her transition from being home-schooled in Africa to the first day of public high school in the United States and face many social rules that many teenagers face today. The culture shock takes a toll on Cady as she witnesses the different norms, values and beliefs in North Shore High School. She was no longer in the jungle surrounded by trees, plants, and animals, but by the harsh reality of social rules that exist today in high schools.
Media is the backbone of American society today. People thrive on the drama of knowing what celebrity did what with who, or what stocks crashed this week, or even what the next act of congress might be. Every individual will have their own opinion on how important all of these topics are, but the fact still remains that without media, the large majority of people in today’s American society would be lost. One of the most common forms of media that is accessible by every American today is television. Television allows people to know what’s going on in the world, it gives people endless hours of entertainment, and it even has a certain value in advancing people’s knowledge on certain topics.
In the movie's world, these social cliques not only have an impact on how students are going to be viewed during their high school years, but also how they can have profound emotional and physical effects on young girls. Mean Girls shows young women criticizing each others looks and weight, while gossiping about what one said or did. All of these practices have been recently studied by social scientists, who believe the movie was extremely accurate. Throughout the film the screenwriters showcased its actors portraying negative behaviors of bullying in schools amongst teenage girls. And a recent study stated that statistically this movie had a significant impact on how teenage girls treat each other, the results proved to be negative.
The girl’s interests are usually limited to make-up, hair, boys and shopping. Movies such as ‘Mean Girls’ and ‘Clueless’ and television shows such as ‘Big Bang Theory’, ‘Home & Away’ and ‘Sex In The City” encourage the idea that teenage girls and women are ditzy, stupid and superficial. The movie Clueless (1995), for example, stared Cher (Alicia Silverstone), a rich teenager from Beverly Hills. She was blonde and beautiful, and enjoyed the "typical" teenage girl activities. Cher and her friends spent all their time shopping, doing makeovers and chasing after guys.
Around ninety-nine percent of families in America own a television, which means they watch TV a little bit each day. So Steven Johnson is writing to a very big audience and tries to persuade to them that watching TV makes you smarter. He starts out his article with a conversation of two scientists from the Woody Allen’s movie Sleeper. The script was supposed to be an opening joke because in the movie all the food that is supposed to be bad for you, turned out to be good for you in the future. The central claim of Steven Johnson’s article would be that watching TV makes you smarter.
The school holds what they call The Multiple Intelligences Festival, this festival has been held every year for the last four years. Jan Cox, the school principal, states that “We bring in a lot of different people with a lot of different talents so the children can experience that,”They begin to understand that they have different talents and they see adults with different talents and it broadens their idea of what they can do when they grow up.” (Castillo, 2008) In the hallways and classrooms of the school are hands on exhibits where the students experience the talents hands on. One exhibit that attracted a lot of the students was with Sgt. Gary Smith of the New Mexico State Police Crime Scene Investigation Unit. The students were paired up and use black powder to lift finger
Parents today are working harder and earning more money than ever before, and they can afford to pamper and indulge their children more than any previous generation. Simultaneously, peers and media marketing cultivate children’s material interests and, by middle school, their desire for extraneous possessions begins to accelerate rapidly. Current annual spending trends are soaring, with children between the ages of 8 and 12 spending 18 billion dollars annually and teens’ annual consumption is reaching 94 billion dollars. The majority of these purchases are clothing, video games, and cd’s. Children are finely attuned to each other’s acquisitions Xbox 360s, PlayStation 3, cell phones and iPods.