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Complete PICLE corpus of essays by Polish advanced EFL students (330,000)
/^t/However, taken from the other point of view, the influence of mass media on our approach to reality appears to be a negative one. As mass media are very often central to the way we shape and define our lives, they turn out to be a danger to our personality. One effect that most concerns us about mass communication is that any individual derives so much of his view of environment from the mass media. Thus, they can deprive us of the creative thinking and ability to preserve our own world of values. As far as mass media are concerned, one cannot forget about the question of objectivity. There is no doubt that television, radio and the press are not objective. They do select materials and direct our thinking to specific areas which they define as important. They bombard us with images and information concerning particularly crimes, disasters, wars. The results seem to be two-fold. They not only decrease our feeling of security but become a model of bad behaviour as well. It comes to the question: How far can the media direct an individual's actions? All of us have seen children and young people imitate the people on television. This is innocent enough when it encourages fads in language or clothing, but it is far from innocent if - for example - it presents models of violence. The quick, incessant flow of information, similar films, similar political campaigns, all that seem to overwhelm us and contribute to the feeling of some kind of emptiness.