Unit 4 deals with the media influence that teenagers are subjected to in a seemingly never-ending flood, whether it be over the radio or their MP3 player, through the Internet, or on TV. It’s a given of our world, and thus it’s crucial that they know how to analyze and resist these messages that fill our world every day.

Teenagers also may be the most savvy consumers yet. Having grown up in the deluge, many of them have become aware that advertisers do not have their best interests at heart.

But all these influences still have a normalizing effect: If all your media images and sounds suggest that there are no consequences to drinking alcohol, eating supersized meals, having sex, and/or dieting to be as thin as Paris Hilton, then it seems normal to do all that.

The three web-based activities associated with Unit 4 are Concentration, Self-Check, and Web Inquiry: “Body Image and Nutrition.”

Web Inquiry: Have students link to read the article “Body Image and Nutrition.” The article discusses the aggressive nature of junk food marketing and how youth receive mixed messages from the media.

Extension: Have students track the pattern of usage of a particular substance in “Monitoring the Future” (www.monitoringthefuture.org). This survey of substance usage among high schoolers contains a lot of data that students can examine. They might, for example, try to correlate smoking statistics to various media campaigns about the dangers of smoking. More information on this study can be found in the Internet Resources section of this website.

This article on media aligns with the following goals of Unit 4 of the LST High School curriculum:

1. Identifying different forms of media.
2. How the media influence our beliefs about ourselves, our culture, and various health behaviors.

Students will read the article “A Healthy You!” from the Centers for Disease Control website. The article outlines a CDC initiative targeting six critical health areas that profoundly affect teenagers’ health, as well as other significant topics.