Television s Impact On Teenagers Today - 1975 Words

Palomar College Televisions Impact on Teenagers Today Shilpa Pryor Digital Broadcasting Arts 100 Lisa Faas 3 May 2015 Shilpa Pryor Professor Lisa Faas Digital Broadcasting Arts 100 3 May 2015 Television’s Impact on the Teenagers of Today The way teens have been portrayed on television over the years has evolved quite drastically. Now more than ever tv shows have catered towards this adolescent age group. Young people consume hours of television shows over the week, and it’s what they are consuming that can be the cause of concern. How teenagers are represented on television has an impact on the very teens who are watching these programs. I want to look at how exposure to television content over the years has affected the†¦show more content†¦Its influence on the masses was still something that was highly underestimated. There is no doubt that television has played a large role in influencing the teenagers of today. When television had first started in the United States there were only 3 channels available NBC, CBS and ABC. Any opportunity to show content targeted toward teens was not really available at the time. When FOX came on the scene in the 1980’s, they were able to cater to the younger generation with shows like BET and MTV (Jamieson and Romer 18). Music was a key entry point; combined with television, it became popular among teens. And as corporations realized the spending power of teenagers, and the potential influence they could have on them, they started targeting this new audience. According to the Teen Health and the Media web site, American teenagers on average spend about 20 hours a week watching television. This means that by the age of 18 they will have been exposed to over 350,000 advertisements on television and 100,000 of that would include alcohol ads. This means that teens are using a third of their day to watch TV. (Teen Health and the Media). A great example of the effectiveness of advertising is when Victor Strasburger from the American Academy of Pediatrics shared a research study about the effects of advertising. A group of children from the ages of 10 to 12 could recognize a Budweiser frog just as easily as they could recognize the bugs bunny character