Jeanine Kohlbecker October 1, 2011
Mass Media usage has major effects on our society today. Most people have an account on a social network site such as Facebook, Twitter and even MySpace. Facebook is very distracting to people, especially students because we constantly have to be in the loop with the latest gossip and who is dating who, and who is broken up and what teams just won etc. Students are beginning to spend all their time on these sites rather than focusing on homework and studying which is having a negative impact on grades and schoolwork.
Another big distraction is T.V. There are so many different shows and reality shows that students like watching and it is distracting them away from their work. My usage of T.V and Facebook has gone down a lot since last year because my course load has gotten a lot harder and I have a lot more credits to take for my major. I only watch T.V when I’m stressed out or about to go bed because it relaxes me and takes my mind off of things that stress me out. Facebook is a different story. I am on Facebook a lot but sometimes I’m not looking at it, it’s just open on my computer. I use Facebook mainly as a means of communication to talk to my family that lives far away.
I was exposed to a few norms that are typical for our society. Younger children in the generation below me have iPods, Facebook, Cell Phones and T.Vs in their rooms. I remember when I was that young I never had anything like that because cell phones were just becoming popular, there weren’t iPods yet and most people didn’t have televisions in their rooms. These forms of technology are corrupting the youth and the future of America. Kids as young as 11/12 are having sex also because of what they see on T.V and what older people say and how they act around them.
Another norm I was exposed to was how much the use of text messaging effects the way people communicate. Text messages take away people’s ability to carry on a conversation without having to stop and think about what to say first. Students who are right out college tend to have trouble in a job interview because text messaging takes away their ability to carry on an intelligent conversation and be able to answer the interviewers questions correctly and intellectually. Talking on the phone is not much better because people are not talking face to face with someone which is a crucial part of an interview.
Text messages also affect the way students write papers and their grammar in the papers. In text messages it’s easier to abbreviate because there isn’t as much room to spell out words, well this is a bad thing because teenagers start to incorporate those abbreviations into papers they write for school which affects their grade which n the end may affect the college or job that they get in to. Text messaging and phone calls are beneficial because they keep people in touch with their friends and family but people lose their sense of language and grammar especially through texting.
These norms have affected me by being in the generation where technology keeps changing and people have to get used to new ways of using everything. Although text message lingo doesn’t affect how I write in my paper or even how I speak but sometimes I have a little bit of a slip up at times but I catch myself and fix it right away. I do have to admit though that text messaging does affect how I speak in conversation and I find myself getting more nervous when I have to speak face to face with someone because I have to be able to think quickly on my feet in order to respond to the question.
