Teen Magazine Effects

Teen magazines have multiple negative effects on both boys and girls.
Contents of Teen Magazines
Teen magazines include, Seventeen, CosmoGirl, Cosmopolitan, Allure, Glamour, and Teen Vogue. 85.6% of 12-17 year olds and 55.8% of 16-19 year olds read the Seventeen magazine and 12.6% of 12-15 year olds and 31.2% of 16-19 year olds read Cosmopolitan. 75% of the overall teen magazine readers are girls. The main sections of these magazines include, looks, love, fashion, boys, health, sex, and development. 19.7% of the overall pages in magazines include boys. Articles dealing with sex in particular are also repetitive throughout these magazines. Advertisements take up 1/3 of these magazines and 37% of the advertisements focus on appearance and 50% of those dealing with looks use the beauty ideal image to promote the products shown. These magazines have representations of ideal masculinities and femininities, sexuality, gender roles for both boys and girls that are unrealistic and unhealthy for teens. Teens continue to read these magazines to escape reality, relieve stress, for information, or help form identity.
Effects on Teenage Girls
53% of all American girls at age 13 are unhappy with their bodies and by the end of their teenage years it raises to 78%. These teenage girls deal with appearance, self-esteem issues, boys, and peer pressure. Advertisements are a large contribution to girls feeling self conscious because they are comparing themselves with the beautiful and unrealistic looking models throughout the different pages. The cover models are mostly white or have white features. Teens then hope that if they buy these products they will look like the models in the ads or the cover celebrities. Looks are not the only pressure that magazines cause, the fashion shown in these magazines add stress to them because if they do not have these clothes they fear they will not fit it. These magazines are filled with high priced clothes that are unaffordable to most teenagers. The articles in these magazines view girls to be virginal or highly sexual. 60% of high school aged girls learned about pregnancy, birth control, and contraceptives through teen magazines. More than half of all 17 year old girls have had sex. Women feel they need to have this beauty ideal to attract boys. Reading these articles on dating and boys cause girls to feel pressure to look good and follow these rules to get boys.
Effects on Teenage Boys
Throughout teen magazines boys are viewed with the same unrealistic beauty images as girls. The effects of magazines on boys is almost equal to girls there has just been less studies done on boys. The magazines have pictures of teenage boys with muscles and perfect features which can also make boys feel the pressure of looking that way in order to feel attractive to girls. This can cause eating disorders that mostly females have but do occur with boys and also it increases the use of steroids with teenage boys. Even though these magazines can cause low self esteem for boys, girls still have a higher instance of it. Boys are also viewed in the different articles to only care about girls with good looks, those who are unintelligent, and those who are superficial. Teen magazines view boys as prizes and sexual beings. Male celebrities have been included in teen magazines since the 1980s. When viewing these male celebrities boys feel the need to look like them and act like them.

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