Social Media Development

Today’s media landscape is rapidly growing, and its influence is often evaluated as being beyond any control. For this reason, many scientific communities put much effort to study media’s development in order to give it the right direction. Ordinary people, on the other hand, use its different types on the daily basis, often without critical thinking. However, its impact on them is bigger than they can expect. In such a manner, media consumption has both positive and negative aspects that define its overall benefit for the humanity.
Media information frequently involves messages regarding sexuality, because it is the easiest way to draw people’s attention. Thus, it contains a certain portion of sexual education, which provides lessons on how sexual attraction can be judged. Such influence belongs to cultivation theory that forms particular perception of the subject (Ekpenyong and Turnwait 95). Consequently, viewers begin to demonstrate definite behavior, which can be perceived as sexually attractive, as well as they improve their knowledge in common sexual appearance (Ekpenyong and Turnwait 97). As a result, media serves as an intermediate source of sexuality, which combines various communities under one and the same notion about the aspect.
Since media is universal, it also ensures considerable transparency that is inherent in its usage. In particular, different people can always express their thoughts and ask questions regarding their sex concerns or join other persons’ discussions related to the topic (Vollenbroek et al. 282). Such bidirectional flow of opinions raises the quality of sex information and improves the issue’s understanding. In general, media’s possibilities have not been understood to the full extent, but it definitely intends to consider customers’ experience for the content’s improvement (Vollenbroek et al. 281). Consequently, media consumption is not a passive process anymore, and people can select only truthful information, which also allows them to compare personal experience with sexual education online.
In spite of media’s obvious benefits, researchers still frequently oppose it to the real life perception. They insist that, without critical analysis, people are too vulnerable to unrealistic expectations that it provides (Albury and Byron 10). In the long-term perspective, young adults become orientated to quick pleasure, which leads to neglecting important life values. For example, they can run a big risk in terms of their health to get sexual satisfaction. Moreover, according to the survey, women coming from developing countries face sexual harassment more often due to the impact of media content (Ekpenyong and Turnwait 94). Thus, people can lose the objectivity and concentrate only on easy rewards promised by media, or even become aggressive when they feel that they do not obtain the promised affection.
Another drawback is associated with media’s subconscious impact, which means that the majority cannot control it. Its information is targeted at the mass market, and the topic of sex is frequently used, because many people think about it (Vollenbroek et al. 281). As a result, media addresses the issue in the hidden manner, the message remains in customers’ subconsciousness, and makes them believe whatever marketing experts promise to them (Vollenbroek et al. 284). Such workers carry responsibility for companies’ profits, but not for people’s health and their general wellbeing.
Positive and negative sides of media demand critical analysis and evaluation. People can believe information they get from it when this information acts subconsciously. In other situations, they always have an opportunity to compare the given perception with own life experience related to sex. However, media’s influence cannot be undervalued even in case when it offers sexual education. At the same time, some of its gaps can lead to people’s aggressive behavior as well as increase the number of sexual diseases.
Works Cited
Albury, Kath, and Paul Byron. “Rethinking Media and Sexuality Education.” School of the Arts and Media, UNSW, Nov. 2015, pp. 1-14.
Ekpenyong, Alfred, and Michael Turnwait. “Social Media and Sexual Reproductive Health Behaviour Among Adolescents in Bayelsa State, Nigeria.” AIJRHASS, Jan. 2016, pp. 94-98, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Turnwait_Michael/publication/315655087_Social_Media_and_Sexual_Reproductive_Health_Behaviour_among_Adolescents_in_Bayelsa_State_Nigeria/links/58d85053a6fdcc1baeb8ec83/Social-Media-and-Sexual-Reproductive-Health-Behaviour-among-Adolescents-in-Bayelsa-State-Nigeria.pdf. Accessed 23 May 2017.
Vollenbroek, Wouter, Sjoerd De Vries, Efthymios Constantinides and Piet Kommers. “Identification of Influence in Social Media Communities.” International Journal of Web Based Communities, vol. 10, no. 3, 2014, pp. 280-297,https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Efthymios_Constantinides/publication/264816198_Identification_of_influence_in_social_media_communities/links/552ba42f0cf21acb091e5258/Identification-of-influence-in-social-media-communities.pdf. Accessed 23 May 2017.