Chapter 12 - Media Flashcards
12.1 Summarize patterns of media use among adolescents in developed countries.
Nearly 9 in 10 American adolescents have access to a digital device, which they use many times a day for text messaging and for using social media such as Facebook and Instagram. “Traditional media” such as television and recorded music are also used for 2 to 3 hours each, so that adolescents’ total media use is about 8 hours a day. Rates in other developed countries are similar.
12.2 Identify the major theories of media use, and describe the Media Practice Model.
Cultivation Theory proposes that television cultivates attitudes and beliefs among users. Mean World Syndrome is an aspect of Cultivation Theory, proposing that people who consume violent media come to see the world as more dangerous and threatening. Social Learning Theory asserts that people are likely to imitate behavior they see performed by a model who is rewarded, including behavior depicted in media. The uses and gratifications approach depicts young people as active media users rather than as the passive recipients of media stimulation. This approach recognizes that young people vary in the media choices they make and in their responses to the same media experience. The Media Practice Model applies this approach to adolescents.
12.3 Identify the five major types of media use, and explain why they are especially prominent in adolescence.
Uses of media among young people include entertainment, identity formation, high sensation, coping, and youth culture identification. Identity development is often a prominent part of adolescence and emerging adulthood. Sensation seeking tends to be higher in adolescence and emerging adulthood than earlier or later. Emotions are often stronger in adolescence than in other life stages, which makes media more valuable for coping with emotions. Participation in youth culture takes place primarily in adolescence and emerging adulthood.
12.4 Describe the role of media in adolescent socialization, including whether media tend toward broad or narrow socialization.
Media are a new source of socialization in the lives of children and adolescents, arising mainly in the past century. In a society where media content is relatively unrestricted, media tend toward broad socialization, because media content is diverse and people can select the content that is best suited to their needs, wants, and personalities. Unlike other socialization sources, the main objective of media is profit, not the teaching of how to function successfully as a member of a society.
12.5 Explain the ways media undermine other sources of socialization.
Media undermine other socialization sources because they are driven mainly by profit, not by the goal of teaching a cultural way of life to the next generation (as is the case for other socialization sources). Media content can contradict the efforts of other socialization sources, such as parents and schools, by promoting self-gratification rather than impulse control. Sometimes media function as a “super peer,” providing (like peers) information on topics that adolescents feel they cannot receive from parents. However, media often reinforce cultural socialization messages about what is morally acceptable.
12.6 Summarize research on the relation between violent television content and aggressiveness in adolescence.
Although hundreds of studies have been conducted on television and aggression, mostly on children, the evidence that television is a motivator of aggressive behavior in adolescents is mixed. Correlational studies show a relation between watching violent television and children’s aggression, but this does not account for self-selection of media content, and in any case the relation is not as strong for adolescents as it is for children. Field studies have yielded mixed results. The strongest results showing causation are from the natural experiment in Canada involving three towns with different levels of television access, the so-called “Notel” study, but the effects were shown for children, not adolescents.
12.7 Describe the uses of violent electronic games by adolescent boys.
Electronic games have also been said to promote aggressive behavior, but this effect has not been persuasively demonstrated. As with television, most studies are correlational and do not show causation. Also, most experimental studies do not account for whether the adolescents or emerging adults in the experiment actually play electronic games outside the lab. In the rare studies that ask adolescent boys how they are affected by the games, they say they enjoy the fantasy role-play and the social aspect, and that the games have a cathartic effect on their anger.
12.8 Describe and evaluate the claims that hip-hop instigates aggressive behavior.
Criticisms of hip-hop target themes of sexual exploitation of women, violence, racism, and homophobia. Hip-hop is very diverse, and unfortunately the few studies on the responses of adolescents who like the music do not distinguish between violent hip-hop and other forms.
12.9 Explain how cigarette advertising aims at the developmental vulnerabilities of adolescents.
Cigarette advertising often exploits adolescents’ needs for independence and for acceptance by peers. Studies find that cigarette advertisements for Marlboro, Camel, and Newport are highly attractive to adolescents, especially adolescent smokers, and that these brands are also the ones adolescents are most likely to smoke. Internal tobacco company documents provide evidence that tobacco companies have explicitly sought to appeal to adolescents. In recent years tobacco advertising in developed countries has been restricted, and the focus of the advertising has switched to online ads for e-cigarettes and to developing countries.
12.10 Identify the main uses of social media among adolescents and emerging adults.
Adolescents use social media mostly to keep in touch with friends and find new friends. Although fears have been expressed that social media will isolate people and damage their social relations, adolescents report that use of social media strengthens their friendships and makes them feel more confident. However, many of them find it difficult to regulate their social media use and keep it from becoming too much.
12.11 Summarize the evidence that media play a leading role in the globalization of adolescence.
Media content for adolescents is increasingly global, meaning that adolescents worldwide have access to some of the same content. Western media are most dominant, because young people in developing countries are growing up in a rapidly changing economy much different than their parents knew, and are attracted to media they believe contains information about the world they will inhabit as adults. Although media are a powerful force in the globalization of adolescence, in most traditional cultures young people use local media as well as Western media.
