Mass Communication and Social Behavior

Try to imagine a home in the United States without a radio, television, newspapers, books, magazines, or stereo. Try to imagine a car without a radio. Try to imagine a school without television monitors, a library, or a school newspaper. Try to imagine a community without at least one newspaper, one radio station, perhaps a cable television facility, several network channels, and an educational station that few people watch or listen to. It boggles the mind; what could we possibly find to do with ourselves without such mass-media diversions? No other social institution so pervades our lives, wherever we go or whatever we happen to do. We might escape physically from our family, our church, or our school, but one of the strictures of contemporary life in the United States is a virtual inability to find a hermitage free from the mass media.