Learning Outcome

Media has the power to influence young people especially through reality TV. Earlier this year we did a project about media’s influences. My group chose to look at reality TV’s influence on young people and how it compares to scripted fare. After observing many different shows we found that reality TV seems to overdramatize everything while more sitcom-like shows poked fun at things.

Two of the shows we looked at were Teen Mom and Jersey Shore. Teen Mom illustrates and glamorizes the lives of pregnant teenagers. There have been many stories in the news media recently that interview young pregnant girls who say that the show influenced them and their pregnancy. Jersey Shore on the other hand radicalized partying and promoted negative Italian-American stereotypes. Many teenagers and young adults watch Jersey Shore and are influenced by its views. The cast treat drinking and sex as a nonissue and blatantly do all of that and much more. This has the potential to influence young people into thinking that every Italian-American goes out drinking and partying.

 Scripted shows, however, while they do their fair share of dramatizing, do it in a more lighthearted way. One of the shows that we looked at for this was Suburgatory. We used a clip from this show that showed one of the main characters asking another character if she could blink with all of her makeup on. She could not blink with all of her makeup on. That character is portrayed as the superficial dumb blonde but on this show she does have some depth given to her character as well. This show provides an outlet for young girls to realize that sometimes wearing a lot of makeup and being superficial is not the best thing.

Overall we found that all types of television have the power to influence people. However, it’s how the shows handle these issues that really makes all the difference. Reality TV shows like Jersey Shore or Teen Mom both have the power to influence but they take that advantage and use it in a negative way. Scripted shows, especially sitcoms, generally influence in a more positive way either by making fun of the issue itself, or by providing healthy realistic portrayals of young people. What we found connects directly back to learning outcome two on how media has the potential to influence. We found that media has the power to influence especially on such an accessible platform such as television.