Does the media affect your health - Essay Example

In most cases, the use of these mediums can significantly influence not only the way we perceive things in life but also result to the development of our eating habits and the way we perceive or feel about our body images (DArcy and Jan). Seale explained that most of the food and beverage companies are using the media as a platform in advertising their food or beverage products even if these food and beverages does not contain the proper nutrition needed by our body (Seale, Health and media: an overview).

For example, multinational companies are more than willing to pay a large sum of money just to advertise their formula-milk on the television. By continuously using the media as a way of persuading mothers to feed their babies with formula-milk, the newborn babies are the ones who suffer from not getting the most of out the health benefits they should receive from breast-feeding (Seale, Media and Health 199). It is also possible for some tobacco companies to take advertise their cigarette products using any of these media as a way of encouraging the people to smoke (Seale, Health and media: an overview).

In some cases, people are unconsciously using the Internet or other social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter to make themselves look better off as compared to other people (Falcon). By boosting their ego at the expense of other people, the use of social media networks can somehow cause depression to other people. Aside from the risk of becoming a victim of cyber-bullying (Falcon), the media can also be used to trigger aggressive behaviour possibly due to substance abuse or trigger inappropriate sexual behaviour (DArcy and Jan).

Considering all these examples, it is clear that the media can be used to negatively affect the people’s physical, psychological and emotional health. Even though the main purpose of using the media is to entertain or communicate something to the target audiences, there will always be some