Nowadays, Media is a vast form of communication that permeates nearly every aspect of modern culture. Children are exposed to all sorts of media outlets, from television, movies and advertising to social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram. The media offer a broader platform for people’s life, but it also brought some negative impact, especially for young people. As a result, children always is one of key protected objects for media regulation.
In Australia, there are a number of classification categories, including: G, PG, M15+, MA15+, R and X. If a film, computer game or publication is deemed inappropriate by the Classification Board, it is refused classification and prohibited from sale in Australia. However, The classification of films and video games often attracts controversy. For example, in 2012, there was controversy of the classification of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. Despite the fact that the film featured graphic science fiction violence, it was given an M classification which meant that children under the age of fifteen could watch the film(Lamb,B 2013). As a result, movies and television programs often show characters using drugs and alcohol and engaging in violent behaviors, in my point, which is worst effect of media for teenagers. At a developmental stage when teens seek greater freedom and independence, the glorification of drugs, alcohol, risky sexual and violent behaviors in the media make it challenging for teens . For example, many teenagers imitate super heroes they see in the screen which may cause danger to their life. In addition, some movies and television programs mislead young people, which cause young people to think using drugs and alcohol and violent behaviors that are kind of cool. Therefore, children need to be protected from the potentially adverse impact of the media until they are mature enough to treat material critically. However so far, in the media industry, media regulation basically based on self-regulation. Therefore, media regulation still have lat of problems. As a result, many negative elements still exist on television, movies and advertising. For this problem, we need a effective regulatory systems, regulators must be able to identify accurately and specifically the harm they seek to avoid.
Nowadays, media and the Internet have played an important role in our daily life, so we cannot prevent children to contact with media and Internet. Therefore, what we can do is enhance media regulation and offer a good environment to help the healthy growth of children.
References:
Lamb,B 2013, Media Regulation, Lesson bucket, Viewed 20 September 2014, http://lessonbucket.com/vce-media/units-3-4/media-influence/media-regulation/
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