Have you ever heard or read a top­ic where peo­ple are referred to as con­sumers?

The Con­sumer Iden­ti­ty: How Media Trans-formed Cit­i­zens into Com­mod­i­fied Audi­ences where peo­ple became rev­enue gen­er­a­tors for com­mer­cial activ­i­ty and adver­tis­ing audi­ences.

In Amer­i­ca and indeed the entire world we are inun­dat­ed with adver­tis­ing.

All day every day, movies are now on aver­age 3 hours long but the same movie with­out com­mer­cials are only 1.5 hours long. So if you think about it, the aver­age movie has between 40 to 50 per­cent com­mer­cials and in fact just the oth­er day I was watch­ing a movie and real­ized that they showed 3 min­utes of the movie then they showed 17 com­mer­cials

So three min­utes of movie and eight min­utes and 50 sec­onds of com­mer­cials.

This is a big prob­lem.

Huge.

The Com­mer­cial Takeover: When Adver­tis­ing

Over­whelms Enter­tain­ment

In today’s media land­scape, view­ers are fac­ing an unprece­dent­ed assault on

their atten­tion spans. What was once a rea­son­able inter­rup­tion for nec­es­sary

adver­tis­ing rev­enue has mor­phed into an over­whelm­ing bar­rage of com­mer­cials

that fun­da­men­tal­ly alters the view­ing expe­ri­ence. The sta­tis­tics are stag­ger-

ing: movies that orig­i­nal­ly ran for 90 min­utes now stretch to three hours when

broad­cast on tele­vi­sion, with com­mer­cials com­pris­ing near­ly half of the total

run­time.

What if what you watch on TV impacts your life in more ways that you might real­ize.

This is a hor­ri­ble thing but cur­rent­ly mil­lions of Amer­i­cans and indeed peo­ple all over the world are watch­ing these pro­grams, that fea­ture killers, mur­der­ers, psy­chot­ic mur­der and worse.

Peo­ple are watch­ing this and then think­ing it is ok that it will not come out lat­er in forms of depres­sion men­tal ill­ness and ter­ri­ble things.

We often see head­lines that defy descrip­tion hor­ri­ble things hap­pen in real life.

The first thing peo­ple begin to think is how could they do the evil things they did?

How could they do it?

Could it be that some peo­ple retain these images that they see on hor­ror movies and in fact in some cas­es they view these mur­ders as enter­tain­ment.

The Dark Side of Horror: How Scary Movies Impact Our Daily Lives

While hor­ror movies pro­vide thrills and enter­tain­ment for mil­lions of view­ers, the psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of con­sum­ing fright­en­ing con­tent can extend far beyond the clos­ing cred­its, sub­tly influ­enc­ing our dai­ly lives in ways we might not imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize.

Sleep Disruption and Anxiety

One of the most imme­di­ate impacts of hor­ror view­ing is dis­rupt­ed sleep pat­terns. The adren­a­line and cor­ti­sol released dur­ing scary scenes can linger for hours, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to wind down for rest­ful sleep. Many view­ers report expe­ri­enc­ing night­mares, insom­nia, or height­ened anx­i­ety after watch­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly intense hor­ror con­tent. This sleep dis­rup­tion cre­ates a cas­cade effect, impact­ing mood, cog­ni­tive func­tion, and over­all well-being the fol­low­ing day.

Heightened Paranoia and Hypervigilance

Reg­u­lar con­sump­tion of hor­ror media can lead to increased para­noia and hyper­vig­i­lance in every­day sit­u­a­tions. View­ers may find them­selves check­ing locks mul­ti­ple times, feel­ing uneasy in dark spaces, or expe­ri­enc­ing irra­tional fears about sce­nar­ios depict­ed in the films they’ve watched. This con­stant state of alert­ness is men­tal­ly exhaust­ing and can inter­fere with nor­mal dai­ly activ­i­ties and social inter­ac­tions.

Desensitization and Emotional Numbing

Para­dox­i­cal­ly, while hor­ror movies can increase anx­i­ety, they can also lead to desen­si­ti­za­tion to vio­lence and dis­turb­ing imagery. Reg­u­lar view­ers may find them­selves requir­ing increas­ing­ly intense con­tent to achieve the same emo­tion­al response, poten­tial­ly dulling their sen­si­tiv­i­ty to real-world vio­lence and suf­fer­ing.

Impact on Relationships

Hor­ror view­ing habits can strain rela­tion­ships, par­tic­u­lar­ly when part­ners have dif­fer­ent tol­er­ance lev­els for scary con­tent. The lin­ger­ing effects of fear and anx­i­ety can also impact inti­ma­cy and emo­tion­al avail­abil­i­ty in rela­tion­ships.