Abstract

The media is an immense form of communication that among modern culture, has the potential to influence all aspects of our beliefs, opinions, our state of mind and general wellbeing. In a world where our youth is continuing to be exposed to the ever expanding different forms of mass media such as television, marketing advertisements, magazines and social media websites such as Facebook and Instagram (just to name a few,) it is vital that teenagers today have a well-equipped understanding into the influential realities the media portrays, to understand how to handle the media pressures that they are being exposed to.

This Independent Research Project surrounds the topic of “media and youth,” which in today’s society has been shown to be a controversial topic for some, as individuals all across the world continually discuss whether the media is fundamentally a positive or negative resource that youth today are exposed to, ever more than before. The aim of this project is to thoroughly demonstrate the impact that different forms of mass media are having on today’s youth, and how it is continuing to form and change their identity. The purpose of conducting this report is to educate readers on the extent that different genders and age groups in the youth category are being progressively impacted by mass media influences and what the impact on their emotional and physical wellbeing has been.

The primary research method utilized to help conduct findings to assist in the ongoing preparation of this project was by producing questionnaires and employing the stratified sampling approach. After the population of students were divided into year groups, a select number of students were randomly sampled from classes in each year group to take part in the questionnaire.

During the timeline of the IRP, there were different personal sources of data that were used to process different kinds of information, to assist in the completion of this project. These included:

≥ My CAFS teacher, Ms Wloadarksi

≥ Students in my CAFS class

≥ Students who completed the questionnaire

≥ My friends and family

This project brought out expected and unexpected outcomes in relation to the secondary research completed. Overall, males were less influenced by impacts of the media, often concluding that they weren’t influenced by media’s “expectations” or the “celebrity culture” that appears to be becoming more relevant in our society. However, for the most part, females on the other hand appeared to be more influenced by mass media, due to the heightened respondance to media marketing and wanting to physically alter their appearance, often through aspiring to undergo cosmetic surgery in the future. On another note, there were some aspects of modern culture that are perceived to be influenced by mass media that students from Glenwood High School as a whole were overall not as influenced by as expected, which was a surprising outcome.

Throughout this IRP, my hypothesis will be discussed in greater detail to examine the specifics into the topic “media in youth.” These results will be established through primary and secondary research and then investigated to accomplish my objective of the successful completion of this IRP.