WEEK 1 | Task 2

WRITE AN ESSAY ABOUT 400 WORDS : DESCRIBING YOUR THOUGHT ON MEDIA USE INCLUDE PHOTOGRAPH IF YOU WANT.

In society today, the construction of a personal identity can be seen to be somewhat problematic and difficult. Young people are surrounded by influential imagery, especially that of popular media. It is no longer possible for an identity to be constructed merely in a small community and only be influenced by family.

Firstly, it is important to establish what constitutes an identity, especially in young people. An identity is something that occurs to a person, like a state of drunkenness. However, I believe that identity is something that is constructed over a period of time and can constantly be updated or changed completely. Young people can be seen to change their identities throughout puberty and often have different identities at the age of 11 or 12 to when they hit mid teens to their early 20s. Throughout this period, they will be in contact with many different influences ranging from older brothers and sisters, what is deemed to be ‘cool’ in school to popular imagery derived from the media such as the ‘in colour’ this season.

For the BROADCAST MEDIA, the content have not always been available for use to young people growing up. Nowadays, it is quite common for children when they come home from school to switch on the television and watch the programmes especially designed for them.  It is hard for the parents to control their children to watch. Most of them were worrying that thier kids might copy the behaviour portrayed on screen and use it in school, somehow constructing their identity from aspects of the characters in the drama.

Similarly, PRINTED MEDIA such as magazines can also be seen to have a great influence on the formation of an identity, not just in young people but with adults too, to an extent. For example, there are constant complaints made about the portrayal of thin models in fashion magazines that apparently encourage young women to want to be as thin as the fashion models they see in such magazines. Adverts seen in magazines, on billboards, on television or even the Internet and the imagery such advertising campaigns put forward can also be seen in influence a young person constructing their identity. This can be anything from the ‘correct’ labeled trainers to buy to which mobile phone is the smallest and therefore most popular to which beauty treatment to use. The list is endless. 

The same can be said of the SOCIAL MEDIA. I believe the Internet is an especially interesting medium for young people to use in order to construct their identities. Not only can they make use of the imagery derived from the Internet, but also it provides a perfect backdrop for the presentation of the self, notably with personal home pages. By surfing the World Wide Web adolescents are able to gain information from the limitless sites which may interest them but they can also create sites for themselves, specifically home pages. Constructing a home page can enable someone to put all the imagery they have derived from the popular media into practice.

In conclusion, it can be seen that the popular media permeates everything that we do. Consequently, the imagery in the media is bound to infiltrate into young people’s lives. This is especially the case when young people are in the process of constructing their identities. Through television, magazines, advertising, music and the Internet adolescents have a great deal of resources available to them in order for them to choose how they would like to present their ‘selves’.

Source : 
http://www.journyx.com/node/2065
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/klh9802.html