The Cultivation Theory was created by George Gerbner and Larry Gross from the University of Pennsylvania they believed that the more time people spend watching television, the more likely they are to believe the social reality portrayed on television.  Which means that heavy television viewers have a stronger opinion for a particular social reality such as violence, prostitution, wealth, and employment. American cartoons and animation movies have benefits, such as teaching children; the values of honesty, courage, and friendship, fairness, and good will triumph over evil. In these cartoons the protagonists often use aggression to beat evil. Violence, sexual category problems, and religious issues show up more in films than we think. Children could easily confuse reality and fantasy, especially in our current society where parents who are busy with work, socializing use video games, and television for their children. This may affect children’s childhood by presenting negative messages.

Most children start watching television at the age of six months, when they are around two or three. The children become enthusiastic viewers. Watching television is not all that bad, children can learn the alphabet, learn about wildlife, but watching too much tv can have a negative effect.  Psychologists believe that children that watch tv for more than 4 hours a day is more likely to be overweight. While kids are watching tv, if they observe aggressive behavior, they may become hostile or they might fear the world.

These cartoons concerns started the AAP in the 1930’s which stands for American Academy of Pediatrics. This group believes that there is a better way to help children learn than watching television. In a recent study, they found out that 90 percent of parents said that their children under the age of two watch one to two hours of some form of electronic media. At the age of three, 1/3^rd of children has a television in their bedroom.

In the mid 1960’s there was research to focus on media effects. Specially, whether watching television influences the audience’s idea and perception of everyday life. This theory states that high frequency viewers of television are more susceptible to media messages and beliefs that they are real or valid. This called the Mean World Syndrome which is the belief that the world is a far worse and dangerous place than what it is.

Agenda-setting theory is the create public awareness and concern of salient issues by news media. This theory was developed by Dr. Max McCombs and Dr. Donald Shaw in 1968 which was the presidential election. Both Doctors was part of the “Chapel Hill study” which gave them a correlation between one hundred residents of Chapel Hill, in North Carolina. They reported the most important election issue and the local and what the media reported was the most important issues. The research gave two beliefs, the first on is, how the press and the media do not reflect reality. The second was how media focused on a few issues and subjects that lead to the public to receive those issues as more important than other issues.  

Agenda setting goes through a mental process which is called accessibility. Which means the more commonly and significantly the news media covers an issue the more cases that issues become accessible in the audience’s memories.  

A great example of the agenda setting theory is the Clinton scandal and the Watergate scandal.  The Clinton scandal, sexual affair of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky which was an intern. This created a media frenzy and was sensational news for years. Media gave pages of news about top stories. The media influenced the mindset of people so much and the news got viral to result in a presidential impeachment. The Watergate scandal was exposed by media and was blown out of proportions. The media created different falsehoods such as corruption.

At the end of the day, it is proven that social media may have given people the ability to shut out information. People that are a part of the social network means you could still get affect but those issues by being accidentally exposed to them. Social media now a days is not that reliable anymore especially in politics. I am personally not into politics because it is only hurting yourself and others and for what reason? American is not what picture it would be like. My little cousin has Facebook which I do not think is healthy, posting terrible things about the opposite group. When I was 13, I was not thinking about politics because younger people are so gullible, I would believe what other people would tell me and the chances of it be correct was slim.  Being a teenager is difficult, our frontal lobe is not fully developed which controls a lot of decision making, our sexuality, and may more things. When I was 13, I didn’t know what I wanted, among many other people which is why everyone has “stages” of what we want to be because we are trying to find our true self’s. It is hard for younger people to learn to not always believe in what you heard because media is trying to push you to believe in something that may not be the full truth.