Social influence and media influence

It is majority rule that people tend to conform to the circumstances and people around them. Especially adolescents usually participate in different social groups because of their need to be part of something.

People are influenced by the society and by media from their early childhood until their adulthood in general.

Social influence has the enormous power on the individual. This influence can be seen in people’s conformity or compliance to behavior of society. A lot of children and adolescent spend their time in front of television or computer overmuch. First of all, children hardly differentiate fiction and reality so because of this they are often victims of manipulative practices of media. According to research of O. Krajnak (2004) children do not consider programs of Slovak television as violent. 13.5% of scholars did not see any violent program on the Slovak television. 30% and sometimes 38% of scholars has occasionally seen the violence in television. It is possible to assume that PC games and action films shifts the limits of violence of scholars much further. However, parents have different opinion than their children. Up to 69% parents said that there is too many programs with violent scenes and only 23% parents think that amount of violence is appropriate.