The Media's role vs The People Around You in the Development of Personality (continued)

Anything the media can do your peers can do better 1) I disagree with this idea of people copying the actions of the media over that of their parents/peers. A news reader preaching peace whilst your brother whacks you over the head is fighting a losing battle, a parent walking in and telling you to stop will be much more effective method. walking isn't distancing yourself from your parents, it's an attempt to copy their actions. Imitation is a highly important stage in a child's personality development. Moving out of the house will often occur upon a child moving to college, at which point they are outside of the age we agreed in which personality develops the most, if you wish to expand the age range however you may but in this time a person will be extremely guarded to all influences, media and interpersonal. guarding from influence increases as you begin to disagree with the views around you, if you wish to push a major argument towards the lack of guarding against an influence then I wish to point out that a child in early development will have no guard and will be almost entirely influenced by their parents. as a child ages they become more guarded to all sources as acceptance by society becomes increasingly important to them. http://www.ehow.com... notice how the reluctance to act on an influence is increased with age and introduce the fact that media is only subjected to us after the development of out ego/super ego is well under way and I reiterate the importance of personality development through our parenting. -> has never become emotional over fictional happenings, but I'll trust in your research for now. So you argue that our ability to empathise with a dilemma through media is greater than our ability to relate with reality? because the students may come into the college believing the tutors to be unhelpful but reality will eventually win out, how many of them do you think leave thinking the same thing without the backing of reality to agree with the view of the media. reality is more believable than media, peers represent reality. life imitates art, art imitates life, therefore life imitates itself through art. people will always believe what is their reality and media is only another conduit of information, this proves that it has an influence but offers no strength to that influence. also a believe the last paragraph of this article fits my argument against media perfectly, it's amusing to wonder what we would do in these situations but we are more than aware that it is not true. http://www.nytimes.com... "What we learn is only what we learn --... imagine that they might co-exist" the last sentence of this goes quite in my favour as well https://sites.google.com... "He examines poetry as a piece of art and not as a book of preaching or teaching." as such this medium, and many others by the same idea, are disconnected from reality and therefore fail to become more than amusing past times. this discounts almost all varieties of non-factual media, significantly reducing the effect of your empathy to fictional media argument. 2) http://www.newsfocus.org... so it would be fair to say that the media should not be trusted because they hide the truth? In turn would we not undergo continuous disbelief upon realising this fact? I am being influenced by you, a peer, through media. this negates as it has passed through both sides of the argument. media gave me the ability to be influenced, but it is a peer who is influencing me. Rebuttals 1) I offer less arguments for my side but I would not call this these minority cases as each time I have directly compared media and peer influence and given cause as to why the peer influence/parental influence is greater. BOP has been more than met, I doubt this would have come to a second debate if you doubted that I could offer good arguments in return to your own. agreed, media influence convinced him that the game would be good. but I argue that this would only occur in the case where media is the only influence, had his peer group told him the game was over-rated I sincerely doubt he would have bought it. 2) And your parents plant the first and most nurtured seed of influence, this offers proof towards my side of the debate. In addition, how many people do you think intentionally influence their friends. about 50/50 right? so those that are trying to influence you to do what they want get ignored, but what about the other half? the other half are comfortable with you how you are, this inspires confidence that they are nice people and you act to become more like them, seed of influence planted. Purely comparative arguments 1) actually 2) but 1) was dropped. You have quoted someone's opinion as truth, "The media represents a higher culture" , a little careless. but even if I sidestep this action the fact that media is considered to be a higher culture could only act to further distance it from the people that it tries to influence, making it more abstract; making people feel less capable of emulating the behaviour it encourages and therefore acting to lessen it's influence. Further insuperiority of the media The lack of complete influence is not the lack of strong influence. I am influenced to be like my friends BECAUSE we are different, in much the same way that I influence them, the subtle differences between people are the easiest to overcome and therefore it is easy to be influenced to change these small things. this may seem like an argument in your favour but I ask you to imagine the insignificant size of an atom, and remember that they make over 1/6 of our universe. if something so small that we cannot see it can create a body of unimaginable proportions then small changes we make to ourselves to better fit in with our peers can change our personalities immensely. Minority groups are small insignificant portions of society, that's what the word "minority" says. less that 10% of all people are gay, and their acceptance would never have been pushed for by the media had they not gotten together and somebody influenced the others around them to take up a stand against their discrimination. peer influence was neccesary for media influence but media influence was not neccesary for influence to occur therefore it stands, that in this case also, peer influence was more important. "Local homosexuals don't have the same power that she has because she is the Media" the message reaches more people with the media so would be seen to have a greater affect, but in the development of a single subject peer influence would be greater. An adopted child raised by gay parents would think nothing of media telling him that homosexuality was wrong, the same child raised by homophobic parents wouldn't care about the media telling him/her that she/he should accept homosexuality.