Magazines Gave Us Today's America

When Ben Franklin kicked off the first U.S newspaper in 1741, he could have never possibly imagined what it may flourish into. Or maybe not. Maybe Benjamin Franklin knew exactly what he was doing,  publishing The General Magazine and starting a written revolution in America. Magazines cultivated our national identity over time, providing us with an array of American writers, poets, and musicians to help develop a sense of unity. By creating our own culture bit by bit, the American society progressed into more of a unified nation, and not just a multitude of various individual cultures. Of course the individual cultures assisted in building the unification of one- making the U.S. as diverse as it is today- but being able to share that collective identity helped shape us. 

Just like movies and radio, magazines were forced to demassify. Now as we discussed in Journalism One, this was due to national advertising switching to the more efficient process of television. Thus magazines lost money and switched to covering more niche audiences, leaving us with the variety of publications we have today. But magazines demassified quite a bit ago, and since then we've still evolved as a society. Maybe targeting niche audiences for magazines has deeply changed us, as media does in  subtle yet blatant ways.

As citizens, we are constantly aware of the media, with things such as the news, television programs, social media, and so on and so forth. Yet many of us probably don't realize the large impact our consumption has on our daily lives.  What we see and hear affects our brain subconsciously,  causing us to make certain decisions based on what we are told. For example, if you consistently see Republican posts and supported arguments in your Facebook feed, you may start to be swayed towards that political party.  Focusing on the niche audience took away the overall family friendly vibe of magazines on a large scale.  This allowed many publications such as Playboy to come about. I'm sure readings such as this existed before the demassification, but they developed to become more mainstream afterwords.

 Magazines target many different niche audiences, such as just girls, just boys, those who look for gossip, or history buffs. There is nothing wrong with that at all. But as we see in different medias such as music or movies, things are becoming more promiscuous as time goes on. What wasn't even allowed to be mentioned thirty years ago is now exploited in detail. This is due in part to niche audiences, which slowly allowed mature content inclusion overtime, because of the need to appeal to certain groups. Magazines helped reinforce this in some aspects, with content such as Cosmopolitan being pumped out, allowing for that hypersexual fueled material. Girl or boy centered publishings can also be negative, forcing kids to want to appear more adult. Wear more makeup, get a boyfriend/girlfriend in fifth grade, achieve this body shape in your tweens. Societal standards have always existed, but in recent years, studies have shown kids now a days are much more mature than before. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2834559/Kids-growing-faster-today-s-technology-Facebook-mobile-phones-causing-young-people-mature-quickly-poll-reveals.html

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/kids-today-are-growing-way-too-fast-0528.html

Kids in this modern day and age are becoming more sexual younger, more profanity laced; but still more informed than previous generations. This can be either good or bad, depending on how we take it. But what can be shown is that media, and applying to niche audiences has played a huge role in this development.