Psy/265 Week 9 Capstone Checkpoint

The media can send mixed signals to adolescents. Adolescents are more susceptible than most when it comes to outside sources. The media often teaches that sex is a game of sorts and tends to put pressure on adolescents as well. The males are pressured or taught through the media that they should have a more relaxed laid back outlook on sex as a whole. Females on the other hand seem to feel more pressured to be more like the “perfect female” as the media portrays her to be. The females will then often times become obsessed with becoming someone they are not. Females as well feel pressured to become sexually active, and become stressed as whether to say yes or no to a male when propositioned with the possibility of sexual relations.

There are both negative and positive effects on our adolescents from the media. Some negative effects would be that there are large amounts of sexually explicit content being viewed by adolescents on a daily basis. Females have become increasingly more sexually active and both males and females are becoming sexually active at younger and younger ages. Males tend to gain the understanding that sex is a contest rather than that of an act of love; this in turn causes more stress upon the female as many feel obligated to become sexually active to be accepted, which in turn is leading to a higher rate of teenage pregnancies. Some positive effects would be that while adolescents are at home and in school there is a limit of information being given to them on the subject of their sexuality, and therefore they are better able to come to terms with their own sexuality through media response. The adolescents can as well learn that there are in fact dangers in becoming sexually active.

I remember when I was in high school it was believed that if one was not sexually active it meant that they were not socially accepted, being sexually active meant being cool. I would watch shows such as 90210 and Saved By The Bell after school every day. In...