Essay on Impact of Mass Media on Personality

Films, television, radio, newspapers and magazines are the most prominent forms of the mass media. They influence the behaviour pattern of persons in a different manner.

1. Films:

Films create an environment in which one experiences a near real life situation empathically for about two hours and a half. The growing personality of childhood and adolescence figs in the films of their taste the portrayals of reality (which they believe are true).

They long for glamour of appearance, role models and villains, and varying patterns and styles of behaviour, how and whom to respect or fight.

The impact of films is increasing continuously since the tired of hero-portrayal has shown a shift from the mythological, historical, national and social to a matured individual, to a frustratedpost-adolescent and to loving and tormented adolescent.

2. Television:

Television creates an entirely different sort of environment. It exerts its influence as under-

(i) Through its serial presentations it encompasses one’s thought by continual and prolonged discussion of the role-models and patterns of behaviour.

(ii) It forces a person to tune in on time.

(iii) A person viewing television, gets engrossed it as if all what he is watching is true.

(iv) The viewer realise that by the visual stimuli only time has been spent for nothing.

(v) It turns the constant into a passive person as it permits no time and imagination to express oneself in one’s own way.

(vi) The school going children and adolescents start neglecting their education, if parents do not intervene.

(vii) The long arrays of advertisements initiate the child and the adolescent into exploring market products and change or develop food habits, bathing habits, clothing habits and some inferiority complexes.

3. Radio:

Prior to the emergence of television, radio was the major mass medium. The impact of radio relates to the social awareness, knowledge and role models and personal upbringing, besides entertainment.

4. Newspaper:

The mass medium of newspaper has two basic characteristic:

(i) It is restricted to those who can read and

(ii) It reports and discusses reality.

Each newspaper reflects and builds a particular ideology of thought or reality. It also motivates the development of regularity.

The result is that generally newspaper-reading becomes a habit of the individual. It develops in reader’s awareness and knowledge of the events across the world.

5. Magazines:

The magazines present a collection of reading in a selective area. A magazine creates a selective environment. Consistent and persistent interest in a magazine gradually builds in the individual typical attitudes and values communicated through the magazine.

Thus, it becomes evident that mass media play prominent role in affecting and moulding the personality of an individual.