According to an article in the Deseret News, reality television is giving teen viewers, particularly female adolescents, the wrong message about how they should behave. The author cites an episode of America's Next Top Model when Tyra Banks basically tells a final contestant, in the words of the author, "while you look anorexic enough to work as a model, there's really no
place on my reality TV show for an intelligent and self-assured woman." This is giving teenagers the wrong message about what they should be aspiring to. Girls should be aspiring for intelligence before physical beauty.
In a separate article by Dr. Michael Stefanone, because of Cultivation Theory, seeing reality television skews people's perception of what goes on in social situations in everyday life. A study by Jonathan Cohen and Gabriel Weimann echos this same statement.
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| Elyse Sewell on America's Next Top Model |
In a study done by Robert Parker Hawkins at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Children's awareness of the unreal nature of most reality television affects the way that they perceive reality because their minds are so impressionable. Reality Television has a poor effect on children's behaviors and the way that they function in the real world.
Watch a Youtube Clip Below about this issue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGZ--1x5rXM
