Media influences students more than Parents.

I would like to clear up a misunderstanding in my interpretation of your comment "Parents mould and shape their children" I thought you meant physically but clearly you have no highlighted that you meant emotionally and personally. Perhaps they do indeed contribute a large amount to this moulding of children but it is with no doubt in my mind that I say that media does so to a higher degree. Regarding your point about censorship I am afraid that if you are debating that parents who are restricting the media their child's views to the extent that the child only sees the media that the parent agrees with well then you would be on the correct side of the debate. However we are discussing students as a whole and of the current generation (of 2012) thus I would assume that the general strictness levels in terms of censorship should be the ones we base our debate on. Most parents allow their children to see most media. The only issues that most parents of 2012 students would have issues with would be pornography, crudeness and perhaps extreme gore/violence. Students are subjected to media of all kinds during their life until they are full fledged working adults. They are subjected to newspapers, magazines, Television news as well as programs, movies, games and radio (some other forms are less common and are irrelevant to bring my point across). The point I wish to raise is that parents are only one medium whereas the plural of medium is media! Media in itself is of a greater quantity in terms of how it can influence students as opposed to parents. The truth is that students will actually spend more of their life away from parents than with them during the working weeks of school and college/university so unless we are discussing holiday or vacation times I believe that students are in fact not only open to more forms of influence in regards to media but also open to their peer's gossip in regards to media for more time per annum than to their parents' personal views (assuming we are not discussing home-schooled students). The psychology of a teenager, especially past the age of 15, is to assume you know as much as, if not more than, your parents. However, the most influential people in the late teenage years of a person's life are their peers. What their peers read, they will try to get to read, what their peers think due to their reading, they will try to imitate. It is natural fo students to conform to one view (of course there are outcasts in any school but generally they are outnumbered by the norm that conform based on what they seem to be told by their friends is the right way to live, to think, to dress and to act. How is this influenced? Well teenagers do not usually hold Nelson Mandela or Gandhi as an idol. They tend to hold footballers or pop-stars as their idols, this can be seen from any poll regarding popularity of these people among teens with names such as Taylor Swift, Lady gaga, Justin Bieber, Christiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi being a few who come to mind. Anything they say or do, they want to mimic right? Thus, influences via media largely influence their behaviour and thoughts, far more so than their parents.