IYD: For Teens - Please Don't Try This At Home

For Teens

Please Don’t Try This At Home

One can’t deny the inevitable role the media plays as an influential factor in the complicated lives of young people. The producers and advertisers of “media land” use this to their advantage and create their own little world where modesty has no significance in their vocabulary.

Take for instance all those movies targeted toward middle and high school students. In “media world”, the guy and the girl meet for the first time and make love thirty minutes later. Not only that, but the acquaintances don’t even have second thoughts about the possibility of getting STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) or little baby Junior. I mean why should they worry? It is only the media world, right? Actually…no!

Contrary to popular belief, some teens believe that if it can be done on T.V., then it can be done at home (regardless of the media’s petty attempt to comply with regulations by posting “Please don’t try this at home” warnings). The fact is that some teens are not able to distinguish the difference between fantasies and reality. Those misguided teens wrongly make the assumption that their lives revolve around the media and thus have a biased view of what life is really all about. For example, take a teen with no set morals or established values and show him the movie How High starring Method Man and Redman. As the title suggests, the movie does not promote getting “high on life”, but rather getting high on weed. How High gives a false impression that if you smoke marijuana, you’re on your surefire way to getting into Harvard. No offense, but the farthest place I’ve seen marijuana take someone is to their nearest penitentiary. Not bad for a highly intoxicating-death promoting drug; but then again, try telling that to the morally deficient teen.

Now moving on to the written aspect of the media, magazines geared toward young females are posing a threat to the individualism that we Americans treasure so dearly. Some young girls are so subconsciously controlled by magazines that if a widely circulated COSMO were to say that tattoos make you more fashionable and smarter, you’ll see girls everywhere sporting their new freshly-needled, ink-injected skin. Then there are those teens that go to school dressing like they’re going to a club or a new spring fashion show for the Armani collection, which is perfectly fine if you’re able to balance school with fashion. Nonetheless, from what I see, the “best dressed” is usually the one who’s least interested in getting a thorough education, which is the point of school, right!?!

Plainly speaking, the young males and females of our world need to realize that the media (when I say media, I mean your MTV and new issue of COSMO…just to name a few) is for entertainment purposes only and should be taken lightly. So the next time some magazine tells you to wear green lipstick, you don’t have to…really.

By Noor Dabaie
17-year-old
Sterling, VA