By: Muzhinga Kankinda
Talking to my mother in the lounge, I revisited the past and took a glimpse into the television shows that made me learn a number of words even before I learnt them from my teacher. I particularly remember Sesame Street, an educational show that aired on BTV every late afternoon with Elmo, big bird and the counting vampire as my favourite characters. But then I realized that edutainment which is a combination of the words ‘Education and Entertainment’ is no longer the focus when it comes to media content production. This brings to light a comparison between good and bad influences of media effects.
The influence of media can be both positive and negative depending on the content of the media. For example, Yoda in the movie “Star Wars” instructs everyone that “fear is the path to a dark side, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to suffering” -this is a moral lesson or when Frank Valera (Antonio Banderas) controls his desire to kill his wife and daughter’s murderer after recalling Marcus Aurelius’ quote “the best revenge is to be unlike your enemy” in his book, Meditations which Valera had picked up for emotional consolation. However, when the content of media is negative, it inspires negative behaviour and attitudes in the mass audience and yet we all wonder why our children have changed so much when it comes to conduct.
Some time back, children were only accustomed to watching Edu-entertainment television shows such as Blue’s Clues, Elmo’s World, Sesame Street, Bunny and Friends, Cool Cats and Takalani sesame which helped children learn valuable life and academic lessons and some tips about how to treat people around them, how to handle emotions and appreciate life at a young age.
However, Edu-entertainment has been replaced with Entertainment media which is mostly broadcasting both movies and music shows that are packaged with pop and rap with content about love and relationships. Of course, love is not a bad thing but, these musical shows have encouraged young people to embrace immoral practices like sex before marriage which leads to teen pregnancies, unwanted pregnancies and abortions. Evidently, most pop songs also carry messages that advocate that beauty and popularity is the key to happiness however, this kind of notion has proved detrimental to the mental health of youths and has led them to administer self-harm on themselves in view of meeting the expectations laid down in the music and shows.
This has also led young people to define beauty according to media content rather than the cultural definition of beauty. They also indulge into activities that would seemingly make them popular among their peers i.e. the use of vague language, drinking alcohol, spirits and abusing drugs like cocaine, morphine and marijuana.
A few years ago, Zambia has recorded an incident where children between the age of eleven and fifteen had thrown a sex party in a house at a popular residential area in Lusaka. Additionally, the use of abusive language that is found in these songs has become normal for youths regardless of how offensive and disrespectful these words are. Violence, indecent exposure and abuse in films have also created problems for people in our society. Issues of child cultism, juvenile delinquency and crime in our society have been rampart Thus; negative media content has led to the decline of good moral and culture. Considering how powerful the media is, its influence on young people through educational television shows could be seen in how children and youths conducted themselves when it came to general behaviour as well as when they were at school. They learnt things faster and more of them had a high IQ capacity but with this type of entertainment gone, children have also gone astray.
As such, it is highly important for parents to control what their children are watching and listening to on television, radio and on the internet. Caution children on watching and listening to violent, vulgar language and sexual oriented content to avoid the cultivation of such values. The truth is entertainment media is more concerned about profit than media effects. They will create all kinds of media texts and it does not matter whether it is bad for you or your children. Thus, it is up to you to take care of your household by yourself because the effects of media are non-discriminatory when it comes to influence.
Meanwhile, we can only hope that Educational entertainment can be the priority of media producers to help our children grow up well.
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