The Biggest Drug of All? The Tube

Drinking, partying and having sex.

These are the three high school activities that parents try their hardest to steer their teenagers away from. They prefer to approve all dates, meet the parents of all peers, and constantly monitor cell phones and text messages.

It is understood by parents that these dreaded incidents happen late at night, while someone is under the influence and wandering alone in a dark alley. However, the worst corruption takes place in the daytime, probably in the living room of their very own house. It happens when the teenager turns on the TV.

Today’s teen-oriented television shows are the source of the exact activities parents discourage their children from participating in. The main goal of these shows is to relate to the average American teenager’s life and to immerse the viewers in teenage drama. However, from the perspective of a real American teenager, most of what happens in these shows is not accurate, which leads one to wonder, what messages are these shows really sending to their viewers?

CW’s Gossip Girl lets the viewer know right away that the show is no Hannah Montana. “Gossip Girl here,” says the forever anonymous Gossip Girl at the start of every episode, “your one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite.”

These high-society, Upper-East-Side rich girls live their lives believing they are invincible from authority, rules, and the law. Because their parents own the fancy hotels they live in, they and their friends are granted full access to the bar and any alcoholic beverage they want.

The series premiere begins when long-awaited Serena van der Woodsen returns home from a year away at boarding school. The viewers soon discover the reason she left in the first place: she slept with her best friend’s boyfriend. Again, right away you get the sense of the sexual scandals that remain prominent throughout the entire series.

 Nothing mentioned so far is realistic. No bar is going to serve minors alcohol on a regular basis, no matter who the minor is. Gossip Girl is one of several shows that many other teenagers are addicted to. As one of these addicts, I know what the show promotes and I know what the girls in the show stand for. So why do I continue watching every Monday night?

Gossip Girl creates a bubble of a world. Serena van der Woodsen and her high-society friends get away with anything. Their lives are so different from my everyday suburban life, and that’s what makes the show so appealing. It allows the viewer to escape from reality for an hour.

The Secret Life of the American Teenager is another show that tries to relate to the average teenager, but, like Gossip Girl, it creates a world so contrastingly different from reality that it is almost laughable.

The show is a gigantic blur of pregnancies, proposals, and lots and lots of sex, which is not typical of most high schools. The show is trying to give insight into the life of an American teenager in a sort of behind-the-scenes manner. However, when a real teenager watches it, a girl might get the idea that this type of behavior is normal, even desirable.

America’s Next Top Model, hosted by Tyra Banks, is one of the many shows that base their popularity on beauty. However, Banks chooses very un-textbook pretty girls to compete, therefore sending out the message that beauty can be found anywhere.

Despite this effort, the girls are instantly made over at the photo shoots, completely altering their looks. Once the models have taken their photos for that week, computerized touch-ups are applied to make the models appear perfect. They airbrush their skin, fix any make-up errors or blemishes, and make the models look skinnier.

The America’s Next Top Model crew goes to great lengths to make girls feel beautiful inside and out. Why do they try so hard to send out this message only to contradict themselves during the photo-editing process? They are basically telling their viewers that they can only be beautiful once the touch-ups have been completed.

Television directed towards teens has evolved significantly over the years. From the Leave it to Beaver, to Brady Bunch, to Lizzie McGuire, to Gilmore Girls, they all had a specific intention for their viewers. They wanted the people who watched the episode to gain something from it, to pick up some moral message.

But in the present-day shows, the viewers just learn how to create drama. The messages are still there, but not so innocent, as they are morals like “don’t sleep with your best friend’s boyfriend.”

Despite all this, I’m not saying to never watch these series, for that would be hypocritical; I admit I am a Gossip Girl addict. As parents, your main objective should be to be aware of what your teens are watching. Maybe watch a couple episodes with your daughter and discuss the reality or lack of reality with her. She needs to be stable enough to handle the drama and scandals. If not, then turning on the TV could be just as dangerous as walking alone in a dark alley.