Do You Believe Everything You Read or See on TV?

If a perfect stranger walked up to you and said you weren’t good-looking enough, smart enough, or popular enough, what would you do? Tell them to leave you alone? Turn around and walk away? Open your wallet and give them your money?

Every day strangers try to make you feel insecure so that you’ll buy their stuff. Their reasoning is simple. If you doubt that you’re attractive, you will buy the jeans that attractive models wear. If you’re afraid that you might be unpopular, you will pay money for the CD that everyone is listening to, even if you don’t like the music.

And it goes beyond advertising. Young people are bombarded with media messages, from billboards to commercials to banner ads to movies to TV shows to songs to magazines to bumper stickers to logos. And a lot of the messages seem to be saying very different things. One minute a commercial comes on telling you not to drink, but the next minute a movie shows teen guys having a blast at a keg party. A song says that it’s what’s inside that counts, but then a fashion magazine suggests that girls have to be skinny to be attractive. With all of these messages hitting you every other second, how can you sort out the good messages from the bad ones?

This skill—sorting through messages for the real meaning and motivation behind it—is called “media literacy.” Here are some starting questions to help you get past the hype to see the real message. Next time you sit down to a television show or flip open a magazine, ask yourself:

• Who’s behind it? Who is responsible for this song, commercial, television show, or movie? What is their motivation—to amuse, entertain, persuade? Why did they choose to make it this way?

• Who’s in front of it? To whom is this message directed? Young people or old people? Males or females? How can you tell? What clues does it give you? Does this message rely on stereotypes about different groups of people?

• What do they want from you? How does this song, movie, television show, or commercial make you feel? Is this on purpose? Why would strangers want to make you feel this way? What might they get out of it? What’s being left out?

For more information on getting past the hype, visit the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign’s Web site, FreeVibe, where you can learn about media literacy, get the lowdown on some sinister substances, play games, and hear other teens’ true stories.