Sir,

The psyche of the teenagers today, to a great extent, is affected and shaped by the reality shows. Reality shows shape the mind-set of the younger generation in terms of their thinking, dreams, personality and mindset.

Electronic media or new age media has influenced the mindset of the people, especially the younger generation that is between 14 to 20 years of age. Reality shows manages to bind the audience to see, accept and interpret whatever is presented to them as a reality. Shows,  in one way, try to become a selling tag but most of the things shown as reality is not at all real and are made up to only befool the targeted audience.

According to me, reality shows in a true sense affect the glamour segment within the mindset of the younger generation. Shows aired today like Big Boss, Khatro ke Khiladi  promote indecent behavior, violence, greed and appalling ‘immoral’ values to some extent but the mindset of teenagers are now framed in such a way that even after knowing the fact that most of the reality shows are scripted, they not only assume that it is real but also try to adopt  the same behavior which is shown on television thinking that this will help them to gain popularity and to develop their personality like the participants. The harsh truth is that by adopting these kinds of behaviours, teenagers are losing their charm.

I asked a teenager what she would like to become in her life, “I am not sure about the stream of my further education but I would love to be a part of show like Big boss because I really love watching reality shows as apart from showing talent in front of all one can get the publicity and can be famous in a very short period of time” she said. People are now actually desiring for reality shows as a major part of electronic media entertainment.

The kind of reality shows normally watched are adventurous, controversial, entertainment and quiz show. Majority of teenagers prefer entertainment shows to quiz shows. “We watch television to get entertained as shows are fairly enjoyable, we cannot miss even a single episode of our favorite reality shows.” said a teenager on being asked the reason of preferring entertainment shows over quiz shows.

Hence it can be concluded that behavior of the teenagers is affected by these reality shows to a great extent because they blindly believe in whatever is shown to them.

Yours Truly,

Ruchika Kumari, Communicative English with Media Studies- 2^nd year

Patna Women’s College

  letter to the editor