Molefe, Andrew, “Protect the Youth from Evil,” Sowetan: The Soul Truth, 18 January 2005, p.6. 

OVERVIEW

“Hear No Evil… See No Evil… Speak No Evil,” the inside headline proclaims. “But thanks to mass media young people don’t have a hope of living up to this dictum…”

The picture accompanying this article pictures Television, Games, Radio, Internet, Movies, and Billboard Ads. It is suggested that all these are bombarding young people with negative messages.

The article goes on to suggest that South Africa needs a moral army to protect children from this onslaught.

Television, once a homey medium, has become a box of worms where in a 10-minute sitting, the family can watch a life-affirming documentary only to be punctuated by a sexually-charged advert or a vulgar music promotion.

Global media have put machinery in place to capture and deliver this growing market (of children and teenagers). They have enlisted the expertise of researchers, psychologists, marketers and advertisers for this purpose… they work the minds of the young, extracting valuable data about children’s developmental, emotional, and social needs at varying ages. They know that 61 percent of young teens (13-15) rate the entertainment media as their top source of information (according to the U.S.-based Kaiser Family Foundation).

Advertising, the very engine that powers the global media, sits at the head table of the council of moral perverters. With a global war chest of 1.8 trillion Rand in 2004 (a 7% increase from 2003), advertising agencies command financial resources far greater than most governments of the world.

Shafeeq Sadiq has a degree in marketing. He wonders why advertising is able to get away with murder in an age of political correctness. “People who are not white and women are constantly being exploited in everyday advertisements… Watching a football game, you can find an attractive young lady being swept off her feet by a less attractive man after he opens a beer of his choice.

“Living in Dreamland” outlines a Rolling Stone report on the messages of teen shows on TV. The kids in these shows: 
            * All look sexy
            * Are mostly Caucasian
            * Do not have parents
            * Do not need an education
            * Find high school boring
            * Live in a world that does not resemble reality.

This writer decries not only the sexy and sexist nature of television and music videos but TV’s violence. Commenting on the popular Sopranos, he notes, “65% of its viewers were children sucked into its vice, sex, sadism, violence and the allure of the underworld. Yet, despite its gore, mayhem and deprivation, it made it into the homes of billions of people.”

This South African writer describes how he himself and other adults are barraged by, and sometimes lured into, the madness of the advertising. “Yesterday on my way to work and back, I noticed about 90 ads trying to con me into buying this, that and the other. The last one was a “Sold” estate agent signboard I kicked before going into my house. And that was before I picked up three evening newspapers, switched on the telly and browsed the net. Spare a thought for the poor North Americans,” the reporter continues, “Reports indicate that on average an urban American sees about 3,000 ads per day. Pretty much like urban South Africans, they confront them everywhere. At the petrol pumps, the movies, in washrooms, stalls and during sporting games.”

Not content to remain rooted on terra firma, advertising has even gone into outer space, making even heaven unsafe from commercialization.  The Russian space programme launched a rocket festooned with a 50-metre Pizza Hut logo and talk now is of companies readying themselves to place ads in space that will be visible from earth.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. What is your main impression from this article? Do you agree that popular media and advertising have created a toxic environment for children and youth which can pollute their lives?

2.   Would you agree that before we can have a real discussion on the influence of media on children and youth, we must consider the positive benefits of media as well? And, get the opinion of children and youth on the matter?

3.   Is there any way to limit the tendency of popular media to “push the envelope” on what is considered acceptable, to sensationalize the prurient or macabre possibilities of our world and lives, to stereotype and to exploit minorities, and to objectivize women’s bodies?

IMPLICATIONS

1.   The media is one of the five primary social systems raising (growing, socializing) our children and influencing young people.

2.   Among other things, globalization has presented common challenges to the world’s urban (and increasingly rural) communities.

3.   Only as we understand (learn to discern) the power, dynamics and various effects of media, can young people and all of us control its influence on our lives. As “we are what we eat,” so our values, attitudes and aspirations are subtly and unconsciously shaped by what we continuously observe.

4.   Somehow, we must also discover ways in which common folk can ameliorate the negative aspects of global commercialization.

Dean Borgman  c. CYS