If you’re one of the millions of people who spent last night watching and tweeting at the 2014 VMAs, then you are well aware of the hold that mass media has on youth. Every performance, appearance, sound bite – and the evening’s surprise social cause – was designed to capture teens and young adults worldwide. In this targeting, producers are not only making a range of assumptions about what young people want (and can be made to want), they’re often supporting some negative stereotypes. Take a look at what a team of seniors and teens in our Intergenerational Media Literacy Project discovered in one popular commercial from Taco Bell:
What do you think? Tell us when you make your own broken commercial with the MediaBreaker!
