The media is disturbingly too powerful and it is due to the lack of knowledge from individuals. As a society we have put so much faith into the media for just about anything, from how to raise our kids to where we are visiting next. The media has cancelled out self-guidance and self-experiences needed to help people better understand life and their lives specifically. We live in a ‘monkey see, monkey do’ society and the media amplifies that. We idolize celebrities, we invest into fictional characters, and we even choose occupations from the media. Generation Z and millennials are adding fuel to the fire because of how these groups want things delivered. Everything for gen Z and millennials is about speed and efficiency, the best place to get both those wants is the media and it brings dilemma because the truth is often bent within media.

The media works against our knowledge and fills our minds with how they want us to perceive things. Just look at the various news stations (CNN, NMBC, FOX) they all are relatively distributing the same message but based on various external factors they’ll highlight or shadow particular messages. It is scary that finding the truth takes massive amounts of self investigation because you never know what is being hidden from you.

Going back to how the media has formed many different perceptions on life and watching ‘The Human Behavior Experiment’ it made me think of the Stanford Prison Experiment were people volunteered to engage in a prison experiment in which individuals were picked as prisoner or guard and told to act on their free will but no physical violence. The said experiment was suppose to last two weeks but after just six days the experiment was terminated due to emotional breakdown of prisoners and excessive aggression of guards. I referred to this because how do people play a role as guard or prisoner when they have never been in prison or worked as guards. The answer to that is the way the media has portrayed these roles. These people involved in these experiments created the role based on how the media has shown these roles. Social roles and stereotypes are also highly influenced through media.

The media has become a wrecking ball of destruction on the minds of simple minded individuals. Youth are sponges of the media because of how much time they spend on several social media platforms. The mind is not something to play with and I feel that the media purposely preys on its targets knowing they can easily be manipulated.

The media controls various aspects of of society reaching from social norms to politics to economy. The way that the media adjust and misconstrue popular trends does bring many skeptical thoughts.