Pornography Influence on Teens
A recent research study, conducted by Cyber Sentinel, of 1,000 teenagers showed that the average teenager spends 87 hours a year looking at porn. That is equivalent of 1 hour and 40 minutes a week browsing for pornography.
What other topics did the teenagers search for online?

31 hours a week looking at soft pornography, plastic surgery, family planning, emotional support and dieting.
1 Hour 8 Minutes on cosmetic surgery sites on procedures like breast augmentation and collagen implants.
Teens also go online to find information on pregnancy, contraceptives, sex and …

 
Media Influence on Children – Marketing Power
“The advertising and marketing industry spends over $17 billion a year on shaping our children’s identities and desires.”
Below is an excellent article discussing the influence of media and money in “commodifying” of children in our modern culture. The article itself is very long so I’ve excerpted pieces of it below with a link at the bottom to the original source. Enjoy!
As we face difficult economic times, everyone is wondering how are we going to bounce back? What can be done? In all the pain …

Almost across the nation 50% of young girls are engaged in negative activities such as injuring and cutting themselves or engaging in unhealthy eating habits and disorders due to self-esteem and self-image issues.

Secret Life of the American Teenager
Influence of Sexual TV Programming on Teenagers
“This is the strongest evidence yet that the sexual content of television programs encourages adolescents to initiate sexual intercourse and other sexual activities. The impact of television viewing is so large that even a moderate shift in the sexual content of adolescent TV watching could have a substantial effect on their sexual behavior.”
This article discusses two new programs on ABC called “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” and “Greek”. ABC has traditionally known as a “family channel” have …

The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was a law passed in 1998 for the purpose of protecting children from accessing sexual and objectionable content on the internet. Though the law itself was passed, the law never went into affect because the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit struck down the law, deeming it unconstitutional. The court claimed it violates the 1st amendment – the protection of free speech.
On January 21, 2009, the government recently lost its final attempt to revive the law. The United States Supreme Court …

“…I wasn’t too happy with ads for erectile-dysfunction drugs popping up every 15 minutes whenever I watched a football game with my daughters in the room.” ––Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, 2006
Common Sense Media released a study on the content of TV ads & commercials shown during NFL game broadcasts. They studyed nearly 60 games covering 180 hours of game time coverage. Within that period there were nearly 6,000 commercials and the easy conclusion was that it is impossible to watch a single game without visually taking in messages …

Daniel Petric Kills Mother, Wounds Father
Daniel Petric, a teenager from Ohio was charged and found guilty for aggravated murder and attempted aggravated murder for killing his mother and wounding his father in Oct 20, 2007 because they wouldn’t let him play Halo 3.
Daniel was 16 when he snuck out of the house to buy Halo 3 after his parents told him he was not allowed to play it. His father, Mark Petric 45, forbade him to play it because it is very violent in nature and sexually explicit. Halo is …

Sex Trafficking Victim
Sex Trafficking Part II
Another followup article I would like to give attention too as I feel these issues do not get enough coverage in the media.
There is a video posted online with her discussing her trials.
Article is from the NY Times Opinion Section found here, video can also be found there.

California Congressman Baca
California Congressman Joe Baca has brought forth a bill which would require video games to have a health warning. This warning would warn the consumers that playing the game could have adverse and dangerous influence on the user.
All games with an ESRB rating of Teen (T) or higher would be required to carry a label that says “WARNING: Excessive exposure to violent video games and other violent media has been linked to aggressive behavior.”

Where is the Coverage?
One social issue that doesn’t get as much coverage as it should is the sex trafficking that occurs all around the world. The sex traffic business continues to loom large yet the atrocities involved never quite see the day light. Somehow someway the industries manages to keep it hush hush.
Sex trafficking revenue of people is estimated to be between $5 billion to $9 billion dollars. Often it is misunderstood as something people do voluntarily due to money or debt issues when in actuality many girls are abducted …

Twilight Movie 2008
Movie: Twilight
Featuring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Billy Burke
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
“When you can live forever, what do you live for”
How about the opposite? When you know your life is finite, is anything worth living for?
The movie Twilight is another film aimed at a young audience. In it’s opening weekend it made $70.6 million making it the fourth highest opening film this year. According to exit polls, 55% of the audience were under 25 years old and 75% of the audience was female.
Twilight is a movie adaptation of …

A study came out of the University of Maryland that concludes that watching television contributes to viewers’ happiness in the short term, but has negative affects in the long run. In other words they found that those who say they are unhappy on average watch more TV while those who are happy spend more time socializing with others and reading. This study analyzes 30 years of national data through a series of attitude surveys.
“TV doesn’t really seem to satisfy people over the long haul the way that social involvement or …