Tuesday, January 28, 2020

The Effect of Media on Young Girls

The Effect of Media on Young Girls The Effect of Media on Young Girls One of the most sensitive stages of a human being are their youth, whilst growing up one is faced with numerous transitions that transform one into someone mature. Our society has been swamped by endless media around us coming in different formats, i.e. magazines, newspapers, TV, Internet, etc. Each one of these has managed to flood dominating messages that put one’s self-image into question. Within the context of this essay, it examines the effect of media on young girls. The fact young girls are at a vulnerable phase they are most likely to be impacted by what they watch on TV, read in the magazines and get pumped by the current social media. Unfortunately the media has put a great deal of stress and pressure on the minds of sensitive young girls who are compelled to accomplish a so called ‘perfect image’. When we refer to the term ‘ideal image’, it directly includes supermodels, models, singers, actresses and icons who seem to be the ideal of young girls. Media is clearly responsible for promoting fake images of models who undergo an airbrushed and edited image of themselves when presented in magazines. Furthermore, these supermodels undergo strict and dangerous diets where their health suffers to an extreme. There are issues of self-image which are seen to be the biggest concern. Within self-image it results in three destructive effects, namely; depression (physical and mental) and eating disorders (Schlegel, n.d) York (2012) exposes the shocking figures from 2011 at 16% highlights there has been a boom in eating disorders. One of the biggest increase was mainly girls who were aged from 10 to 15 up at 69% in 2011. It could further be elaborated that eating disorders have the highest morality rates of any mental illness which were accounted at 20%. Interestingly, the depiction of the so called ‘ideal’ body kinds portrayed by Western media has been perceived as a major factor in inseminating eating disorders. It can be highlighted how social media has rapidly promoting these diseases. Shockingly, the research points out eating disorders were becoming widespread just like a virus due to social networks, whereas pro-anorexic websites would offer tips, guidance and an online community was designed for unhealthy weight management. One fine example demonstrating the widespread search conducted online on eating disorders and losing weight unhealthily is the case of Pinterest who have take n an initiative to put an end to search words, i.e. ‘thininspiration’ that would provide users a list of results which were linked to eating disorders. Pinterest offered users to read warnings that would refer to the dangers of eating disorders and how they weren’t a part of lifestyle choices but were simply a mental disorder which if they left untreated could possibly result in major health problems and even pose a major threat to one’s life. One of the other social networks that is notorious with promoting self-consciousness is Facebook. Facebook has been pro-actively promoting ‘self-consciousness as being an extremely important issue where body image and weight are center of attention. Maree (n.d) believes media has been compelling numerous youth to commit suicide, it has brought youth suicide to the front row where there has been a boom in youth depression that results in a high rate of suicide in the recent years. Maree refers to the statistics taken from the National Suicide Research Foundation (NSRF) back in 2011 which showed the suicide rates stood at four male to one female ratio. Furthermore, suicide amongst young girls was displayed in 2012 as a result of numerous tragic deaths. There were three major deaths that raised eye brows and outraged the public, the tragic deaths of Ciara Pugsley, Erin and Shannon Gallagher raised a very significant issue of why these deaths took place and scrutinizing the negative influence of media and promotion of self-image pushing these young souls to plunge to their own death. Their deaths resulted in organizations within the government along with the media instantly initiating work on fighting the lack of resources for the youth who were suffering from depression. It should be pointed youth depression has emerged due to numerous factors, where such a condition is simply complicated in nature. Self-esteem is said to be one of the main issues which emerge in youth depression. Unfortunat ely the media has been predominantly playing a negative role in promoting conflicting interest in itself also for the youth, where if bad exposure is restricted it can certainly make a major difference. The number of times the young girls view a super model, this makes them wonder if they could share a resemblance to their so called ‘media ideal’s and accomplish this by undergoing cruel diets at a tender age when their bodies are undergoing numerous kinds of changes. The fact the media is constantly flooding the TV channels, fashion magazines and social media with representing a so called ‘perfect woman’, this results in the creation of mental and emotional issues, this specially refers to the inability to remain joyful in their very own body. As per the comments by a counsellor, such a depiction clearly delivers a very impractical body image in the media which can have an extremely serious and deep impact on susceptible woman than one imagines. Sanders (n.d) emphasizes how media marketing has simply depicted a very fake image of models, actresses and icons that becomes an impossible objective for young girls to accomplish. The fact the youth are highly influenced by celebrities and pick up the latest fashion, hair-style and lifestyle trends from their ideals, this results in a trend of being a copy-cat where one is compelled to imitate their ideals and feel a sense of dissatisfaction if they are unable to do so. If one takes into consideration how popular media has been progressively promoting a thinner and thinner body image as the so called ideal for women, this has become more like a competition for the youth where they feel it is necessary to maintain a thin image. Being thin for today’s youth means being beautiful, here they are unable to distinguish between reality and what is digital editing in magazines, social media and online websites. Unfortunately, the youth are paying a heavy price at the expense of their health to be socially accepted by starving themselves on fad diets that will have a major side-effect on their health. In terms of self-confidence, the youth will feel out of place, lacking a sense of affinity and unable to confidently socialize if they do not fit the so called ideal criteria of being thin and beautiful. They feel their social group will reject them on basis of them being slightly fat or what is normal. There is this unpleasant bullying that comes into the picture where one is experiencing teasing from their counterparts on the basis of how they look like, i.e. fat. The fatter you are, the more unpleasant and disconnected you are from being a part of the popular group of girls. Heubeck (n.d) takes the example of American girls who are facing the burden of being model like thin which seems like a real aspiration for them, however this starts off at a very young age which is extremely disappointing. There are countless bombardments of TV adverts featuring models with perfect lips, body, hair-style and the entire attractive physical appearance that seems a must achieve for these young minds. Unfortunately these young girls seems to consider these celebrities as role models even if these role models have a cruel bad reputation. According to Renee Hobbs, EdD, Associate Professor of Communications at the Temple Univesity she found in her research the exposure an average teen gets to media is nearly 180 minutes with only 10 minutes of interaction with their parents on a daily basis. This view is shared by Elissa Gittes, MD- a pediatrician at the adolescent medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, she believes young girls are obsessed with imitatin g the ideal image they watch in media, they end up taking harsh and desperate measures. There has been an increase in the number of young girls who comment on how unhappy they are with their body and are working obsessively hard to change this image of themselves. As per the research conducted by Nancy Signorielli from the Kaiser Foundation, Nancy discovered one in every three articles in leading teen girl magazines also consisted a key focus on physical appearance, where majority of the advertisements (reported at 50%) used an appeal to beauty to market and sell their products. Furthermore, the TV adverts and commercials which were targeted at female viewers depicted frequently were regularly watched by young girls where beauty was seen as the central theme for product appeal. When examining the figures on eating disorders, it points how 1,000 women died annually as a result of anorexia nervosa. Nearly, five percent of adult women and adolescent along with one percent of men were suffering from binge eating disorder, anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. When comparing the figures on men to women suffering from depression and eating disorders, it clearly demonstrates it is young girls who are most affected and suffer from depression and eatin g disorders (Media’s effect on body image, n.d) It can be concluded from the findings within this essay popular media is certainly responsible for influencing young girls in a negative way by making them self-conscious about looking perfect. There has been an artificial imagery of icons created, flashed and swamped in different mediums of media that has caught the eye and attention of young minds who take it in a positive manner. The fact more and more young girls are driven towards looking like their ‘role models’ they take up unhealthy options to look physically perfect even if it means it is a life threatening one. The issue of self-image is an umbrella which entails issues of mental and physical depression along with eating-disorders that have multiplied and compelled young girls to commit suicide. More and more young girls are drawn to look perfect starting from as young as the age of 5. It is the responsibility of media, government, health organizations and parents to intervene and deviate these young girls from taking an extreme measure which would result in a complete chaos. There is a strong need to tackle this matter as the rapid flow of information available online and easily accessed by anyone at the click of a button, i.e. mobile device, tablet, etc., it is truly concerned as to how there is an endless amount of literature available that attracts more and more young minds to imitate their favorite celebrities, icons and become just like them. Governments and health organizations need to implement strict codes that would ban media from promoting an unrealistic picture of what is a perfect woman as these young minds are vulnerable and capable of believing what they see on TV. Parents should be actively involved in monitoring on the habits, patterns and changes in behaviors of their children. The fact we are living in a modern world has meant we are suffering greatly with a fabricated image of what is considered perfect by the media and what is truly perfect in the real world, which ob viously is a complete conflict. Schools and colleges should promote an awareness of accepting oneself rather hating one’s own image. Successful media campaigns conducted like the one by Dove was an impressive and attention grabbing one which demonstrated how beauty in women is not limited to any form of perfection of being thin but rather accepting oneself the way they are. It truly celebrates natural beauty and promotes this image by featuring a group of women in different colors, sizes, heights and empowers female beauty in a natural way. There is a strong need for more and more media campaigns similar to this that should be created and promoted to wash away the wrong image depicted of perfection into the young minds of girls.

Monday, January 20, 2020

Family Values: Importance Essay -- personal values, research papers

Family Values: Importance   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  America's family values are very important to our citizens. For many years the American family and its values have been one of the top priorities of our nation. The family is even an essential part of the â€Å"American Dream† that we Americans are so fond of. The basic idea of success in America is measured by how well one can provide for their family. But what does citezenship have to do with family values? It determines these values and set a standard for the whole of America's people. Family values are of the utmost importance to the American citizen.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Family values are basically the core of our way of living. They have been important since, and even before, the very beginning of our civilization, and certainly since the founding of the United States of America. Theories suggest that even the primitive caveman was very loyal and respectful to his particular family unit. People of our time have followed these beginnings of the ideas of family values and citizenship up until the present day. Today however people are more diversified and separated in their ways but they all share similar values of the family. A nation, being of mostly socially compatible people, functions in a similar way as a family. The nation selects its â€Å"national family values† by legislation which becomes law. Civilization, over time, has brought about values which have become essential to all.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  &nb...

Sunday, January 12, 2020

Gelatin: Colloid and Conductivity Essay

In recent years there has been a revival of interest in the micellar theory of structure proposed by N~tgeli in 1852 as a theory for the structure of protoplasm. This theory has been taken over by colloid chemists and applied to the structure of many colloids as a result of the work of Zsigmondy (1), Pauli (2), McBaln (3, 4) and their co- workers. Laing and McBain (4) have further extended the micellar theory to the sol-gel transformation by proposing that the micellar unit of the gel state is identical with that in the sol. According to these authors: â€Å"All that is necessary is to assume that the particles become stuck together or oriented into loose aggregates, which may be chance granules or, more probably threads. † This conception is based on a study of sodium oleate, for which they found that in spite of the enormous change in viscosity involved in the change from sol to gel, such properties as electrical conductivity, lowering of the vapor pressure, refractive index, and sodium ion concentration remained identical in both the sol and the gel state. In support of their theory, Laing and McBain point out that Arrhenius (5) found the conductivity in gelatin-water-salt systems to be the same in both sol and gel. This aspect of the micellar theory has been extended by Gelfan (6) to protoplasm because he found that the conductivity of protoplasm remained independent of changes in viscosity and by Gelfan and Quigley (7) to the blood coagulation process since their experiments showed that during the coagulation process there is no change in the conductivity of shed whole blood or plasma, in spite of the almost infinite increase in viscosity during coagulation. In view of the concentration of excess electrolytes in the gelatin experiments of Arrhenius, as well as in protoplasm and in blood, the question arises whether the generalization from the findings on sodium oleate to all gelling systems, particularly among the proteins, is valid. In other words, is the identity of conductivity in the sol and gel state due to an identical micellar structure of these protein sys- tems, or is it due to the conductivity of the excess electrolytes being so much greater than the conductivity of the ionized protein salts that the difference in conductivity produced by the structural changes involved in the sol-gel transformation was not detectable by the experimental procedure employed? That there is little or no change in the conductivity and diffusibility of lectrolytes in colloidal systems on changing from sol to gel has long been known and is not a vital point in connection with the micellar theory of Lalng and McBain, since all theories of gel structure postulate that the structure pro- duced is enormous in size compared with ionic dimensions and thus exerts almost no hindering effect on ionic movement. To obtain a fuller insight into the question, the following study has been carried out on the conductivity of gelatin sols and gels. Gelatin was selected because it is an example of a protein capable of undergoing a reversible sol-gel transformation. In carrying out the study we had in mind the work of Krishnamurti (8) who, from a study of the light-scattering in sols and gels of agar, has concluded that the micellar structures in the two states are not identical; and also that of Craig and Schmidt (9) who found differences between the refractive indices of gelatin sols and gels. Experimental Procedure In measuring the conductivity, the Kohlrausch principle was employed, with the difference that a one-stage vacuum tube amplifier was introduced between the bridge and the telephone, which made it readily possible to make measure- ments accurate to 0. per cent. The source of the bridge current was a General Radio Oscillator, and the capacity of the conducting cell was balanced in parallel by the setting of an adjustable condensor. The conductivity cell used through- out the experiments was of the bottle type, constructed of Pyrex glass. A ther- mometer, readable to 0. 1 A °, was fitted into the neck of the ceil in such a way that it could be immersed in the gelatin without interfering with the continuity of the liquid betweeen the electrodes. All measurements were made at 25A °C. â€Å"Difco† granular gelatin was used in the experiments. It was purified and made ash-free according to the procedure described by Loeb (10). The purified gelatin on analysis was found to be totally ash-free and in aqueous solutions to have a pH value of 4. 75 as measured by the hydrogen electrode. The analysis of the gelatin in the experimental solutions was carried out by evaporating l0 cc. portions to dryness in porcelain crucibles and then heating at 110A °C. to constant weight. The plan of the experiments was to warm the gelatin to a temperature of about 37* to obtain the sol, fill the conductivity cell with he liquid gelatin, and then immerse the filled ceil in an oil thermostat kept at 25*. The leads of the con- ductivity bridge were connected with the ceil and when the temperature of the gelatin fell to 25 A ° as shown by the thermometer immersed in the gelatin, the con- ductivity reading was first taken, and then further readings were made at various time intervals. To check the conductivity readings, the gelatin in the cell w as again warmed up to 37 A ° and the procedure repeated. To obtain the conductivity of the gel, the cell filled with gelatin was cooled down in an ice chest to about 10 A ° to obtain a firm gel. The conductivity cell was then returned to the 25 A ° bath and the conductivity reading taken when the gel reached the 25A °temperature. As with the sol, the readings for the gel were checked by repeating the cooling. The experiments carried out were first, a series at different concen- trations of the pure isoelectric gelatin itself to determine the effect of variation in the concentration of gelatin. The results of this series are given in Table I. In this series, it was found that all concentrations of gelatin above 1 per cent set to a firm gel at 25 A °, but that concen- trations of 1 per cent or less remained in a semiliquid state at this temperature. From the results on the pure gelatin, a concentration of gelatin was selected that would set to a firm gel at the temperature of the conductivity measurements, namely, about 3 per cent, and experiments were next carried out on the effects of electrolytes on the conductivity of the sol-gel transformation. The electrolytes used were hydrochloric acid, sodium hydroxide, and sodium chloride at varying concentrations. The results of these experiments are re- corded in Table II where there are recorded the gelatin content, the concentration of electrolyte added, the conductivity of sol and gel respectively, and the percentage difference of conductivity between the two states. In the measurement of the conductivity of the gelatin sols and gels it was found, except for those samples where there was no difference in conductivity between sol and gel, that the conductivity did not attain a constant value as soon as the 25 A ° temperature was attained, but on the contrary, continued to drift slowly even though the temperature remained unchanged thereafter. This drift was in the direction of a decreasing conductivity for the sol and an increasing conductivity for the gel, which on being allowed sufficient time, starting from either The lack of correspondence to a small degree between the gelatin concentration and the conductivity in certain of the experiments listed is explained by the drift in the conductivity noted in the text which makes an exact reproducibility in gelatin solutions impossible. the sol or gel state, finally reached a constant value representative of the equilibrium state of the gelatin at that temperature. In the present experiments, this equilibrium state for all except the 0. 9 percent gelatin of Table I was a firm gel. In the experiments where no difference in conductivity was found between the sol and gel condition, this drift was absent and in these samples when the thermostat tem-perature was once attained, the conductivity became constant. This was the result found for the first experiment of Table I, with a con- centration of 0. 90 per cent gelatin for which a semiliquid state was the state at 25 A ° and for the experiments of Table II where the con- ductivity difference between sol and gel was zero although firm gels were stable at the 25 A ° temperature. The conductivity figures for the rest of the experiments in Tables I and II are the values measured just after the thermostat temperature was attained by the gelatin. The data with the pure gelatin and the electrolyte-containing gelatin solutions are not in accord with McBain’s theory. Rather they are in harmony with the viewpoint that there is a distinct difference in the micellar units of the sol and gel state when a definite firm gel is formed. The gel state shows the lower conductivity of the two forms, which would be expected if the micellar unit of the gel is composed of aggre- gates of the sol micelles, thus naturally resulting in a lower electrical mobility. That the difference in conductivity is due mainly to electrical changes accompanying the structural changes of the sol-gel transformation is indicated by the experiments of Table I. Since in these experiments, the gelatin was completely ash-free, the measured conductivity can only be a measure of the electrical charge of the gelatin in the solution and the accompanying hydrogen ions. From the pH value of 4. 75 given by these solutions, the hydrogen ion concentration is less than 2 A— 10 -5 tools per liter, which, using the value of 350 for the hydrogen ion mobility, leads to the value of 0. 7 A— 10 -5 for the specific conductivity. This value in comparison with the values found for the gelatin, points to the conductivity coming mainly from the charged gelatin and that the decrease in conductivity on gelation is due to aggregation of the gelatin units. The data of Table II substantiate this point of view. When the electrolyte concentration is low there is a distinct difference between the conductivity of the sol and gel state. This difference decreases with increase in the electrolyte concentration and is no longer detected when the conductivity of the electrolyte-containing solutions increases about 100-fold the value of the difference in the conductivity between the sol and gel of the original isoelectric gelatin. The conductivity difference between the gelatin sols and gels as shown in Table II becomes undetectable at an electrolyte concentration of approximately 0. 01 molal, yet blood and protoplasm contain more than tenfold this amount. On this account, the experiments on the electrolyte-containing gelatin solutions throw grave doubts on the conclusion drawn by Gelfan for protoplasm and by Gelfan and Quigley for the blood coagulation process. In view of the large excess of free electrolytes in the systems studied by the above authors, the fact that they found no change in conductivity with changes in viscosity or on gelation, is, under the circumstances, no proof of either an identity of micellar structure in the different physical states of the systems they studied or of a micellar structure at all. From the present studies, along with Craig and Schmidt’s refractometric results, and the work of Krishnamurti on agar, it must be con- cluded that the McBain theory of an identical unit structure for the sol-gel state has no general applicability.