[mother engine]

how much influence does the media have on human behavior? does life imitate art imitating life? from language to dress to ideas of symmetry and sexuality to the philosophical and habitual aspect of daily existance, are humans the victims of high tech mirrors desciding for them how to think feel and live? and how does influence rise or falter with age?

[Turtle]

___Mother asked. "does life imitate art imitating life? " Ney I say; art imitates life imitating imitating art.
___Media is just gossip made efficient, & therefore it is very influential. "Did you hear that Jane & John dammed the river upstream & plan to keep the water for themselves?" Media only constitutes an expansion of a human predispostion to gossip & so it is in a large sense not culpable.
___Age is no guarantee of wisdom, ie. old people gossip as readily as the young.

[orbsycli]

yeah, when refering to somebody by their age, we put them into stereotypes. but this is not always the case, as with all people.
as turtle said, age is no guarantee of wisdom.
media is the largest influence, before there were movies, or pop music, or fashion, people were influenced by either their parents, or the church, or MAJORITY.
majority deems slow change, now with these entertainment options, change is almost every season.
no matter what, people are influenced by everything, it just takes that one question of "why?" to think for yourself, and it blows me away how rare this is.

[mother engine]

Originally Posted by Turtle

___Mother asked. "does life imitate art imitating life? " Ney I say; art imitates life imitating imitating art.
___Media is just gossip made efficient, & therefore it is very influential. "Did you hear that Jane & John dammed the river upstream & plan to keep the water for themselves?" Media only constitutes an expansion of a human predispostion to gossip & so it is in a large sense not culpable.
___Age is no guarantee of wisdom, ie. old people gossip as readily as the young.

maybe i should be more specific: television, films and music. assuming you are not referring to these things as 'gossip made efficient' because by nature they are not.

[Fishteacher73]

I do not recall the exact source of the quote, but it was placed on the board in my Sr. English class one day by the teacher and it has stuck with me.

"You are not what you think you are.
You are not what others think you are.
You are what you think other people think you are."

We (as a group, there can be individual deviation) are social creatures. We require others around us and we need acceptance. For this acceptance we attempt to "fit in" with what we think is the "norm". Media portrays an image of what this "norm" is, although it is distorted from reality (Everyone is pretty and rich and happy on TV. You can afford a huge apartment in New York by working at a coffe house).

Age i think has a degree of relavence in this matter. Older people have become "established" in some sort of circles and have experienced life to understand the discrepencey between portrayed reality and the real thing. These individuals are less likely to accept the new image portrayed today. Younger individuals are still striving to find themselves and are looking out to see the possiblities. They are more likely to see this facade of reality as genuine and attempt to immitate it. Although I do not have any hard numbers to back this, but it does seem to reason and anecdotal evidence that body image problems are much more common in younger individuals than older ones.(Found some, it was correct). This to me would indicate the younger individuals are buying into the projected fantasy reality "as seen on TV."

A study of nearly 50,000 teenage girls revealed that a majority listed appearance as their biggest concern (Exeter University, U.K., 1998). Another very recent study (Fat Talk, Harvard University Press, 2000) indicated that 90% of teenage girls frequently think about their body shape. Add to that, pressure from friends, boys and parents, and it’s understandable that this study found that 86% of teenage girls are, or think they should be dieting. And it’s no surprise that 5-10 million girls in the U.S. have eating disorders.

http://www.focusas.com/BodyImage.html

Most Americans with eating disorders are females between the ages of 12 and 25. Males can develop eating disorders, but generally less frequently. The exception is binge eating disorder, which appears to affect almost as many males as females.

http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/library/DS/00294.html

[mother engine]

it may also be relevant to note that the influence of media is concidered, by many psychologists, to be a direct factor involved in eating disorders in america. i believe as well that young minds are the ultimate battle ground for the war between desire for acceptance and personal insecurity. i can directly attribute the development of my use of nicotine to the influence of a film rather than pressure from peers, but the examples of security in media only became prevalent to me because my peers were equally impressed with the facades represented in film and music.