Media representations influence teenage eating, smoking and drinking habits, adolescents are almost certainly affected — negatively — by sexual references and images from television, in movies and video games, in music, in magazines and on Web sites (Brody, 2006).
This makes raising teens a lot more challenging, a lot more difficult than it already is.
Well, cliché has it, parenting does not come with a manual though you could try Google and ask how to raise teens. For sure WikiAnswer could give you one but it is never enough since the teens we raise come in different packages. Teaching kids how to value family is another difficult path to trudge considering the generous provisions of the internet and the media in general.
Brody (2006) said that American teenagers have been observed to have no trouble accessing graphic sexual presentations and they are not even restricted from hearing inappropriate words and thoughts from popular songs despite the high-end technology named V-chips used for movie rating and televised warnings of appropriateness for young people. Education now becomes a minute thing compared to the gigantic influx of graphic messages that portray sexual activity particularly those that talk about or even portray unprotected sex outside of marriage. They come in handy just like eating Big Mac or drinking Coke.
Perhaps you may say, that is America and this is Philippines. Well, don’t put your guards down because children nowadays, regardless of culture, race and religion are born in the internet era and there are many things they understand about media and the world wide web that parents may poorly have a grasp about.
Filipinos, on the other hand, put great value to family and religion. This is why the Catholic Church plays a greater role on how Filipinos live their lives (that doesn’t exclude the bills passed to the senate). However, the Catholic Church has been facing the same problem as the Filipino parents are.
Fr. Favie Faldas, an organizer of the National Youth Day (NYD), admitted that the Catholic Church is losing influence over the youth because of their exposure to the Internet and the popular social networking websites where they see other people standing up against the teachings of the Church (Macairan, 2011).
The Filipino movies also play great roles on how we perceive the sanctity of marriage which we firmly believe should bind families together.
The more Filipinos watch movies about extramarital relationships like; The Mistress, No Other Woman, A Secret Affair and the like, almost shown consecutively, lightens the notion of illicit love affairs; thus, making having such affair to be just normal. Furthermore, these affairs are even glamorized in movies, soap operas, romance novels, and TV shows of all kinds. And eventually makes audiences even grow curious; As an article in mynewdesk.com (2016) says, "Public disclosure of public figures having affairs is headline news because we are fascinated and titillated by hearing of others' affairs."
Well, I should say the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) should also look and perhaps regulate at how frequent such themes should come up in our television screens; If it is truly the welfare of the children and adolescent audiences they aim to protect. Just pause for a second and think of the effect this may bring to our adolescents. The kind of marriage they would have in the future. The kind of children and this goes ad infinitum.
It's time to break the cycle while we still can.
References
Brody, J. (2006, February 7). Media affects teens' sexuality. The New York
Macairan, E. (2011, November 16). Catholic church losing influence over youth. Philstar
Why do people have affairs. (2016, October 15). https://www.mynewsdesk.com/ca/passionate-life
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