Children Growing Up Toooooo Fast

Is it me or does it seem that Media is help to cause the early maturation of children ? An example, MTV's 16 and Pregnant. This shows purpose I think would be to expose the struggle teen parent's have with have children too young, but media glorifies these teens and they have become celebrities. Can shows like this provide children with the false belief that acting like these teens will allow them to reach celebrity status? Some questions raised when considering how much children are exposed to. Using Media Ecology, we can see how media can alter the young minds. Most know that this glorification of these teens is clearly for entertainment and exploiting "teen dramas" but for those who aren't mature enough to realize this, sees exactly opposite. 

This blog is to investigate that media exposure can be harmful to children and early teens. We are quick to blame parents when a teen or child acts out, but I think we can also blame media. Yes, I agree parents should take extra concern nowadays with their children, but parents can't be constantly hovering over their children. Think about what you can be exposed to the media, at school, on your phone, television, the insurmountable internet, magazines, and friends. The amount of information children and teens are exposed to seem limitless. With new technologies and several mediums it seems like we cannot censor all the harmful exposure from children.


Let's look at the stats that proves how exposure and media are changing 8-18 year olds.

Over the past five years, there has been a huge increase in ownership among 8- to 18-year-olds: from 39% to 66% for cell phones, and from 18% to 76% for iPods and other MP3 players.
Most of these recent iPods and MP3 players connect to the Internet and have multiple capabilities. 

But the many new ways to watch TV–on the Internet, cell phones, and iPods–actually led to an increase in total TV consumption from 3:51 to 4:29 per day, including :24 of online viewing, :16 on iPods and other MP3 players, and :15 on cell phones

Top online activities include social networking (:22 a day), playing games (:17), and visiting video sites such as YouTube (:15).  Three-quarters (74%) of all 7^th-12^th graders say they have a profile on a social networking site.

Studies done by Kaiser Family Foundation... Daily Media Use Among Children

So exposure is everywhere which causes a flux for today's parents to stop negative exposure. Another exposure I believe that needs more consideration is music. Do we want our children to idolize some popular artists? This video seems harmless but we have to understand these children idolize this artist:

  (Nicki Minaj is a very popular scandalous, provocative, promiscuous  artist.) 

Yes they are singing the censored version, how long until they find that they have explicit versions? Seems like the cutest thing, but look up the lyrics to this song, Super Bass Lyrics Of course they don't know what this means yet, but do you let them sing this song knowing the real version and the content that is in the song?
When these little girls are a more mature and learn what exactly the meaning of the words of the song, the parent has allowed their child to allow this activity of  provocative and foul language music.


Lastly, to prove that media has a major influence on children and young adults look at the attempt to live out what they are seeing in major cinema. 

This helps show that some children aren't able to decide what is right and wrong. Yes this movie is rated R in censorship, but who would think that those able to 
watch this movie would reenact this helter-skelter movie. My point being this, I don't advocate censoring everything, most media is to entertain, but how do we censor what media is safe for children and young adults.