Influence of Media on Youth

Growing up as an only child, I have had a lot of time to be productive, write my thoughts down, and even attempt to find my interests in life. Instead, I spent my time watching cartoons and playing video games. Some people would say a mind is a terrible thing to waste but I feel as though it were those very cartoons and video games that carved who I am today.

My favorite video game growing up was a game called Kingdom Hearts. Aside from it's mildly violent game play and complex storyline, this game taught me the importance of friends, dreams, persistence, peace and thousands of other concepts. None of my friends in school liked to play the game but I found it so interesting I decided to devote most of my time to not only playing, but studying the game. I knew how certain characters would react to other characters, I played it over and over to memorize the plot line, there wasn't much in this game that you could tell me didn't reflect back on real life. One of the most important lessons I learned from kingdom hearts was that if you want to change the world, you have to do it peacefully. The only thing violence can produce between two entities is more violence and the strongest weapon you had to fight the hate was love.

Cartoons, growing up, somehow carved my personality as an intellectual. They challenged me to look at situation sideways in order to get a whole new perspective. My generation of teenagers tend to be a lot more cynical and sarcastic than any other generation sole based off of where we gathered our sense of humor from. Knowing myself, I am a very sarcastic person. It literally is second nature to me to be sarcastic to you in the most unoffensive way possible.I feel like I can blame most of my sarcastic ways from shows like spongebob or fairly odd parents or apparently even sesame street! 

Discovering myself through tv programs and video games was one of my favorite pass times and also allowed me to "escape" into another world sometimes. These types of media have influenced me to be the man I am today and still influence me to grow.

by Justin Woods