Research On The Impacts Of Mass Media On Middle School Students' Ego Identity

This paper has attempted to draw attention to the theory of the effect of the mass media and to the researches about the media's impact on adolescents' socialization. It also touches upon the historical and present researches of the ego identity theory, including its definition, its statues, its models, its functions and social factors which influence the formation and development of ego identity. Based on above theories and researches, the paper deduces the relationship between mass media and ego identity. Taking middle school students as subjects, the questionnaire on ego identity and the self work-out questionnaire on media use as measuring instruments, the paper discusses the relationship between mass media and ego identity. The results indicate:1. Significant differences among adolescents' media use and their ego identity are found.2. The more the students use printed media, the lower the score of the ego identity they get; the more the students use electro-media, the higher the score of the ego identity they get, which indicates that there are different impacts by using different types of media, namely, printed media are in favor of the adolescents' ego identity development, while electro-media go against their ego identity development.3. The scores of the informational media contents in television, newspaper, books and Internet are negatively correlated with the scores of ego identity. The informational contents are in favor of the adolescents' ego identity development.