A corrupted generation

Michelline Nawatises

What do you hear when you turn on the radio or put on a CD? What do you see when you turn on the television or pop in a DVD? What do you read when you turn the pages of a magazine or scroll down web pages? What do you hear when you listen to your peers?

Our way of life as teens seems to be prophesied for us by something known as the media. Television shows and movies glamorise drug use and you will see kids lighting up joints between classes. Rap songs scream violent lyrics and listeners start to feel more aggressive.

And who can forget the commonly used f-word that we hear daily?

Is that the extent of our teenage vocabulary? Have we never heard of verbs, adverbs and adjectives? I always thought that was why we have an English classes at school.

Am I making any of this up? No, these things are all placed out there first and then they come true through the actions of people. Now, I am not saying that things were going great before everything seemed to be about sex, drugs, violence and drinking, but what I am saying is that in our day and age kids are making less and less decisions using their conscience, and are instead looking at the media to see what is considered cool.

The media is a powerful force, whether we choose to believe this or not. It can be used to promote good behaviour, but more often than not it is used to advertise things such as alcohol and skews our views on what looks gorgeous and what is popular. I wonder why the media does not show people with beer bellies or alcohol-related car accidents in their ads.

Do not get me wrong, I am not saying that denying every wrong the media bombards us with will make our lives easier. I can tell you from my perspective that it can make for a very lonely life.

But what you can count on is that people will look back and wish they had made better choices when they were younger. It never ceases to amaze me how teenagers struggle to find constructive ways to get over not being accepted in a vile society that values misconduct rather than knowledge.

Kids in our generation grow up so fast, and yet they stay as stubborn as they are moulded. Parents are busy, siblings are either too young or have moved out, and kids in school do not like to read.

Remember my fellow teenagers, you are strong. You are not robotic drones that have to do what the media motherboard says. You can tune out from all that is constantly bombarding us; that which attacks our way of thinking. You can make a difference. Standing up to the beast is not a futile effort.

We are not taking a knife to a gunfight, but rather a pen. And the pen is not only mightier than the sword, but is even stronger than a belching dragon. Treaties have ended bloody, never-ending gunfights, so why can we not lower the influence of the media on our youth?

Let’s face it, are we expected to be the digitally-altered perfect models we see in magazines? That is not even realistic and yet those things make it into print and are distributed.

The media is no longer just harmless entertainment, like it once was. It is a dangerous teacher that teenagers pay more attention to than their school teacher giving them English or Science lessons.

So the next time you turn on that radio or television, stop and realise that what is being said does not just disappear. It does affect our way of thinking. The effects may not always be instantaneous, but they can build up inside us, little by little.

Not everyone is gifted with the ability not to be swayed by these things. Even I, who has seen and heard some of the worst the media has to offer, has found it difficult to keep my thoughts to my standards.