Effects of Videos on Youth essays

Effects of Videos on Youth essays Our youth has grown up with MTV, BET and because of the entertainment value of these entities our youth have been led astray. Some of our youth cant distinguish between reality and the entertainment that the aforementioned media giants are feeding us. The trend toward baggy pants and hair that is uncombed has come from this culture that has prevailed the last ten years. Our youth have adopted every trend that has been shown through these mediums. The reality is that this has led to some behavior and dress that is not appropriate for all venues. The fascination with entertainers and athletes is not strictly a hip-hop generation thing but in this country Hollywood stars are treated like royalty. We need to do more to make Mac-Arthur genius award recipients, for example, as celebrated as Allen Iverson and Jay-Z, but we're up against resilient forces. One thing that obsessive video viewing has done is to create for our youth a false sense of reality. For example our youth think that the lifestyles that are portrayed in the videos are real and not just for entertainment value. Kids imitate the behavior that they see on the screen and sometimes this leads to disrespect and other issues especially at schools. If you ask a youth what they think about the videos you will get the sense they think that they are real life situations that people are living and never consider that these are staged scenes similar to going to a club where your environment is controlled for a specific mood. The image bite has replaced the sound bite. This is one of the complexities about hip-hop. Hip-Hop gains access to public space in the context of popular culture. In that space various sub cultures converge such as elements of prison culture and street culture, for example. The older generation has a responsibility to become savvier in deciphering these cultural convergences. A good place to start is to make a distinction between hip-hop culture and Bla...