As a curious child, I have always been fascinated by one of our key, foundational skills: decision making. As I've gotten older, I've become more aware of how our society works and, fundamentally, how our thought process works. What influences our thinking process? Who controls our thought process? Why do we do what we do? After much thought, one day a sudden realization struck me: Realistically, we don't completely control our decisions. Our surroundings, our environment, our background, all help represent a part of our way of thinking, however one significant factor can completely alter our thinking process in a matter of seconds: the mass media. In this modern era, media is everywhere. We are swimming in media, we are essentially drowning in media, we live in a media saturated world. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay From newspapers, magazines, our emails to our WhatsApp messages, the media has become the public's most trusted source of global knowledge which allows the mass media to form the ability to influence our critical perception. Nowadays, the media has simply made us all gullible. In all honesty we can't even call ourselves people, we are almost like zombies who blindly trust everything we read or see. From our political ideologies to the clothes we wear every day, mass media influences us all. Nowadays, would we know if what we are consuming is actually affecting us? Now many of us think that we are not controlled or even influenced by the mass media. Hold this thought for just a second. We all think that only the most vulnerable people can be exposed to or influenced by the media. We are all wrong. We are all exposed to the implicit messages of the mass media. Now, look at your footwear, which was recently publicized, the superfluous salad we ate for lunch just to keep our body image looking good or even the last president we voted for. These decisions are all influenced by the media and we have all fallen for them without realizing it. In 1976, numerous research projects were conducted to study whether and how mass media influence viewers' ideas about what the everyday world is like. Cultivation theory was later formulated by Professor George Gerbner, in which the main proposition states that the more time people spend "living" in the world of television, the more susceptible they become to believing that the media's message is real and valid. However, we all know by now that the mass media control the simple and basic elements of our daily lives, what happens when this goes beyond choosing which car to drive, which airline to fly with or which diet to desire. Mass media can also influence crucial and critical decisions we make. For example, let's talk about a frequent inconvenience that constantly explodes in our nation: gun violence. In recent years shootings have occurred rapidly throughout our region, with more than one person per day being killed. However, only some of these attacks have been labeled “terrorist attacks”. Those who are defined as "terrorists" are conventionally Muslims or Islamic. This imposed name unfortunately leaves 1.3 billion other Muslims held accountable as terrorists. The people of our nation have been wary of Islamic terrorists since 9/11, and since then this fear against an entire religion has only done.