The media has progressively escalated in relevance through the past centuries, expanding itself and mutating in terms of appereance and objectives, from spreading belief at their starts with the first bible printed by Guttenberg to converting into this
tool used by the groups of power to manipulate the masses.
Focusing on the topic that concerns us presently, we surely know that as time passes the way of thinking changes and that matters because of the impact and influence that are also capable of changing. We can better see this when comparing how grown men and the young people consume media. In an investigation made by Fundacc which showed that the young people tended to investigate in the media about sports, in comparison to the grown men who were more interested in sports. But the question here is why new generations don't like to listen to news, or is it true that all the past time was better? . My name is Juan Manuel Henriquez and we will inspect this phenomenon by comparing the generation of “Baby boomers' ' to the “gen Z' ', and at the end we will do an analysis on how the impact of the media has changed.
Now, before we properly start we need to remember the ages of these 2 groups, baby boomers are the kids who were born between 1946 and 1964 and the gen Z were the ones born between 1999 and 2012. Now that we see dates we can see a 36 year gap between these 2 generations, a 36 years of difference in knowledge and thinking. We understand that for baby boomers the giant of the television industry was on his way in evolution, were there weren't so much content to see in comparison to what we are able to see nowadays, Baby boomers were focused while consuming TV something to make more dynamic their lifestyle or just the way of escapism of the so cruel reality that surrounds them with the economical issues and the global tension of those times. In contrast gen Z has tons and tons of content to watch not only at home, but also in all parts with our loyal friend the smart phone, never in the story has the world been so “connected”but this is only the bright side of the coin. An information brought by the Mental health million project informed that young adults of ages between 18-24 years, are 5 times more likely to struggle with issues related with mental health. A pattern between these 2 generations, during the young ages is now normal that people use whatever they have in their hand to feel safe in a world full of changes as the economic recessions in the 70s and 80s, and the covit 19 pandemic in 2020.
Taking into account this, we can proceed to our next step, to really understand the impact of social media. The “mass human” is a term originally created by Ortega y Gasset and refers to an individual without individuality, an individual who has given up into the trap of equality set by the groups of power, who also give up into his own propper thinking into the majority thinking. Not only as humans but as consent organisms we instinctively look for a group to belong, finding something bigger than ourselves, a noble cause such as a belief, this is a constant no matter the epoch or nationality we speak of.
The mass human is also known for always wanting to show himself to the world as someone happy, calm, and proud. Did this last one ring a bell? The ultimate strategy for spreading the influence of the mass human, the grand imposition of conformist ideas, ladies and gentleman is in your pocket. Each post, each comment, each like, each repost, is the reaffirmation of the recently said idea.
And the worst of all is that this phenomenon is not exclusive to our times. Baby boomers didn't have things such as smartphones to take the same influence, they had the TV and radio. In times of such political tension among groups, the news and radio were spreading a thing called “propaganda” that is used to bomb an individual with pride and sense of responsibility to then drunk them with a religious or patriotic feeling, just imagine how would it have been if Baby boomers had had the social media we have today?
But not everything is so apocalyptic as it looks,several great people have invested their lives into dealing with these social problems, and one of the greatest I want to talk about is about the psycologist Carl Gustav Jung. Now, during his researchs he often used a term “Shadow”, this in simple words is this side of the ego that possess a number of qualities that the the “me conscious” or “ego” does not recognize, commonly referred to negative aspects such as fears,greed, selfishness, and specially weakness. Now you think, Juan, what is the connection between this and the influence of social media? If you remember that magical thing in your pocket again where you show the best side of yourself, and that definitely and with all security in your heart that you would never upload the bad side of yourself as you could be crying, yelling, screaming, or even breaking furniture. And the necessity of maintaining this part of ourselves out of light is what is making slaves of our owner, the social media.
In conclusion, we have put in evidence that social media is each time imposing more and more their ideas of conformism, Baby boomers suffered for just other step in the evolving process of this monster, Gen Z is also living the same, so in order to start a process in which we can limit the influence of social media on not only youngers but also adults, we need to start being more critical with the things we see, and starting to be self conscious about our lack of individuality. To end, I would like all listeners to reflect on how much control we have over our phones in our lives, and how much we are not conscious about the impact that causes us each time we see our phone. And also no matter what one does, there will always be an eye observing us.
Bibliography
https://lamenteesmaravillosa.com/generacion-z-cada-vez-mas-tristes-ansiosos/
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/jr_542833?img=3&src=t_media
https://mentalstateoftheworld.report/
