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The rapid development of mass media during several last decades has significantly changed the society; the impact of these changes and of growing exposure to mass media can be witnessed within all social and age groups. However, the strongest influence can be witnessed for children and adolescents, since the information received from the outer world, and through mass media as well, directly shapes their development. The aim of this essay is to analyze the effects of media exposure on adolescents.
It is common knowledge that the diversity of media and its availability is growing in geometrical proportion, and the density of information flow is increasing from year to year. For adolescents, there are both positive and negative consequences of such phenomenon. On one hand, exposure to media creates media literacy (the skill of critical analysis of media messages and summarizing the information) and enables youth to familiarize with the environment more efficiently. In addition to this, adolescents have the possibility to participate in social life more actively. Wentzel and McNamara (1999) have proved that prosocial behavior in adolescent age strongly correlates with peer acceptance; media exposure (especially active types of media such as Internet, mobile applications etc.) increases the channels for achieving peer acceptance (e.g. social networks, subject forums etc).
On the other hand, it has been shown (Primack et al.) that media exposure results in high depression rates: for each additional hour of daily use, odds of developing depression became higher. It has been found that high levels of violence and crime rate exposure (active and passive messages containing violence) result in higher level of aggression, neglect of other’s pain and perception of world as of a dangerous place for some categories of adolescents. Increased sexual context exposure affects moral judgments of adolescents (Kotler & Calvert, 2003). The level of individual vulnerability greatly depends on the attitude of parents, upbringing, social environment and individual characteristics.
Another important sphere of development affected by media exposure is self-perception: since advertising and public promotion offers certain ideals of appearance, adolescents in their search of identity come to lower self-esteem while comparing themselves with “ideals”. Besides, greater exposure to media results in less time for learning and other school activities and to lack of motion: it has been shown that media exposure and related physical inactivity is one of major contributors of obesity among children and adolescents (Kotler & Calvert, 2003).
In general, despite certain advantages of media exposure, it presents a number of threats for development of adolescents, and in order to mediate the effect of such exposure, parental involvement and critical insight is necessary.

References
Kotler J.A. & Calvert S.L. (2003). Children’s and Adolescents’ Exposure to Different Kinds of Media in D. Gentile (Ed). “Media Violence and Children”. Praeger.
Primack, Brian A. et al. (2009). Association Between Media Use in Adolescence and Depression in Young Adulthood – A Longitudinal Study. Arch Gen Psychiatry, 66(2):181-188.
Wentzel, Kathryn R. & McNamara, Carolyn C. (1999).Interpersonal Relationships, Emotional Distress, and Prosocial Behavior in Middle School. The Journal of Early Adolescence 19, 114-125.