Impact of New Media on Teenagers

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1 Impact of New Media on Teenagers (A research based on the positive and the negative impact of new media on teenagers of Delhi) Dr. Durgesh Tripathi Gitika Khurana Introduction New media is a medium of mass communication that is spreading its magic worldwide. It is making efforts from years and years to educate inform and persuade the masses all over the world. New media is a set of new technologies that became increasingly embedded in everyday niches, it is common for youth to interact with dozen of digital devices through a typical day, and many spend hour upon learning about manipulating computer devices such as laptop computers, handheld computers, cell phones, pagers etc. The term new media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the later part of the 20 th century to encompass the amalgamation of traditional media such as film, music, spoken and written word with the interactive power of computer and communications technology, computer enabled consumer devices, and most importantly the internet. New media has been from time to time bringing out various issues, various happening towards the society through the means of news, views, documentaries, advertisements, photographs, articles, songs, blogs etc. From hardcore issues to soft issues, new media has been bringing out all the inside stories of the society, our government and countries abroad to the people in the country. The new media, including internet, social networking sites, online gaming, mobile phones, instant messages, s is a very vital part of our society that apart from sending messages about various things and happening surrounds everyone in some way or the other. It helps to connect individuals to one another and to the world, invariably; its powerful influence shapes the ways in which the viewers or the participants perceive the world and their own place within the world. The digital media has been characterized as an important agent for the development. While the effect of these forms of new media is pretty obvious among the adult population, the effect is even more profound on the teenage population. New media as a successful tool of mass media has always been a driving force towards the perception and thinking of the society as a whole, but forcing on the future of the country, i.e. the teenagers, it is corrupting their minds. Instant messaging is most popular among years old where as is growing in popularity among those aged 20 years and above. Internet advertising is another popular part of the new media. Internet advertising also known as online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the internet and the World Wide Web for the expressed purpose of delivering marketing messages to attract customers. Examples of internet advertising include contextual ads on the search engine results pages, banner ads, rich media ads, social network advertising, interstitial ads, online classified advertising, advertising networks and marketing including spam.

2 The first internet advertisement came into being in Tim-Berners Lee invented the while working at CERN, the European particle physics library and had their first online advertisement. Since it was a research based on the impact of new media on the teenagers, it was very important to know about teenagers in brief. Teenage is a transitional stage of physical and mental human development that occurs between childhood and adulthood. Teenage is a very crucial stage of one s life as in this period an individual leaves behind his childhood and moves towards adulthood. A teenager is a person between the age group of 13 and 19 years. The teenage is a human phenomenon that refers to an age or stage of maturing person. This transition involves biological, social and psychological changes. There are three types of teenagers in the world. They are: The teenagers who are resilient, intelligent and healthy in body and soul. These teenagers are of a nature that always give their best and stand at the first position in any queue. Some teenagers are always going to fail completely no matter where they are, who their parents are and what school they attend. The vast majority of children fall in between these two extremes. On one side, there is a category which comprises of intelligence, talent,strength etc and then there is the same category of where these teenagers are very active for their schools, their parents and their environment in general. This powerful media indeed has a strong impact on the teenagers of Delhi. These impacts are both positive and negative in nature. Here are some of the impacts of new media on Delhi s teenagers. The new media, especially the internet, mobile phones, social networking sites, online gaming etc. are the products of the new society and each of these are having a profound influence on social relationships, material culture, social norms and values of the society and individuals. The multiplicity of the ways of communicating with our peers and round the availability of information and content has got children glued to television that they have very less time for serious study and sports. With the presence of internet and excessive use of social networking websites, the teenagers have become bit arrogant as they tend to develop an aura of virtual world around them. The websites like Facebook, Twitter, Orkut and many other social networking sites, offers a different variety of new experiments to the teenagers including photo uploads, new status updates, video uploads, gaming, chat rooms and so many, giving them a huge range of activities for entertainment. On the other hand the brave new world of videos on demands like YouTube offers interactive videos of all sorts. YouTube has a pool of videos relating to almost all the topics, be it music, film clippings, news clipping, television episodes or an educational programmes. It is not the new media alone that is to be blamed fully for the worst condition of our society but it s the perception of teens that it is to be blamed. Negative impact of new media Surfing internet becoming substitute : It is possible that surfing internet may substitute other activities that promote concentration, such as reading, games, sports and play. The lack of participation inherent in surfing internet might also condition children when it comes to other activities. Accessing web world causes many attention problems because it may be seen that children prone to attention problems may be drawn to watching television. Short attention span : Symptoms of attention problems included short attention span, poor concentration and being easily distracted is yet another negative impact that a new media tends to leave on the teenagers.

3 New media attacks on young mind : The constant exposure to the new media, attacks on the minds of the teenagers to such an extent that the girl teens feel as if society has set the standard of beauty and if they cannot live up to these standards, then they cannot survive in the society. Positive impact of new media With all these wrong effects that new media puts on the teenagers, there are many positive affects also that its usage imparts on them. Helps in socializing : New media can be used for the positive purpose as well. A social networking site helps them in becoming social and makes a bond between the other people as well. Listening to music is an activity that teens often do alone and is used to help them control their moods. Information provider : New media play an important role in teenager s life. The time that teens spend with a media source exposes them to a great deal of information. Today a pool of information is available at just a click of the mouse. However, as with other information sources, there is a great variation in what the teens attends to how teen make sense of it and what the impact may be on their life. Showcases the prevailing truth : New media helps in bringing out the facts about various happenings in and around the world, helping young minds to open their horizons. Providing news at every second keeps the teenagers informed and up-to-date. Objectives of the study This research on the impact of new media on the teenagers aims at: 1. To identify the impact of new media i.e. the web world on the teenagers of Delhi 2. To study the acceptability of new media among the teenagers 3. To derive the extent of positive and negative impact on the teenagers 4. To find the usability of new media amongst the teenagers 5. To find the impact of internet advertising on the teenagers Hypothesis: The negative impact of new media on the teenagers in Delhi is more than the positive impact. Sample : Purposive sampling technique was used in the selection of sampling. In this technique, the researcher knows the daily habit and routines of all the units. Sample size was 50. Tool : the researchers used questionnaires to conduct my research. This method of data collection is cost effective method and it helped a lot to gather data out of large samples. Method of Data Collection : Data was collected by two methods: (i) Primary Data Collection i.e., through questionnaires and (ii) Secondary Data Collection i.e., utilising newspapers articles, books and magazines and online articles. Interpretation/Analysis Percentage of teenagers using various new media forms : It was found that the use of mobile phones as a part of new media was maximum amongst the teenagers in comparison with the

4 elements of new media including the internet and the other digital devices. The purpose the new media : The purpose of new media usage among the teenagers was to communicate in comparison with the surfing net, games, chatting and others. Various activities that the teenagers : Maximum percentage of teenagers engage themselves in the activities of obtaining information through new media, specifically through the internet. Content creation among the teenagers : It was found that most teenagers engage themselves in content creation on social networking sites. Teenagers liking and acceptance of internet advertisements : From the above pie chart, it was found that the internet advertising also have some positive and negative impact on the teenagers. However, there are certain teenagers who remain neutral with the internet advertising. Conclusion The hypothesis turned out to be a null hypothesis, since the impact of new media is both positive and negative. However, it is not true that the negative impact of new media is more than the positive impact on the teenagers of Delhi. Some of the findings are : Teenagers have their preference towards the new media which broadly including the web world i.e. the internet, mobile world and other technologies. 40 percent of teenagers have preference towards using social networking sites as a medium of communication. Use to new media in daily lives has become a venue for social interactions and a method of content creation for the teenagers. It has been found that nearly 65 per cent of teens accessing new media participate in one or more among wide range of content creating activities on the internet. It was also found that the advertisements on the internet also affects the teenagers and persuades them to have favorable liking for the products. Online gaming and web access induces verbal aggression by 50 percent and physical aggression by 40 percent in teenagers. Also, it has become a substitute to many other activities including sports, gaming, watching TV and physical interactions. However, it has got another negative impact and that is the excessive use of new media tends to affect the mental and physical health of the teenagers making them aggressive and rigid. Reference 1. Jones Steve (2003), Encyclopedia of New Media: An Essential Reference to Communication and Technology, The Moschovitis Group, New York 2. Livingstone M Sonia (2003), Young People and New Media: Childhood and Changing Media Environment, Sage Publications, New Delhi 3. Manovich Lev (2001), Language of New Media, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,United States of America

5 4. Pavlik John (2001), Journalism and New media, Columbia University Press,New York 5. Sieter Ellen (2002), Television and New Media Audiences, United States by Oxford University Press, New York 6. Veltman H Kim (2006), Understanding New Media,University of Calgary Press,Canada Web sources About the Authors : Dr. Durgesh Tripathi is an Assistant Professor, USMC, Guru Govind Singh Indra Prastha University, New Delhi. Gitika Khurana is with Department of MMC, Guru Govind Singh Indra Prastha University, New Delhi.