Sex doesn't sell, it distracts! Did you ever click over to read an article on The N.Y. Post or Daily Mail and notice all the half naked women in the side bar? With a few studies claiming that sex actually doesn't sell and has no impact on whether people buy a product or not, one must wonder why news sites are loading their pages with pictures of the Kardashians and other celebrities. Obviously they attract eyeballs, but what value do they offer the reader? Could it be a larger tactic to dumb down the reader? Is it just using breasts and butts to keep people on their site for another minute?
Its likely just to keep the reader on the site a little longer, but I think the end result whether intentional or not, is the dumbing down of the reader. It fills their heads with the celebrity circus, instead of with the serious issues of the day. Newspapers used to use their journalistic credibility as a reason for us to purchase their product. Today's publications have seemingly thrown all that away for yet another picture gallery of some inexplicably famous woman's rear end. Do people really visit news media websites to get their fill of the reality T.V. circus? I doubt it, but once they get there, I believe it steals their attention away from the hard news they click over to read, resulting in an uninformed citizenry, which is bad for society as a whole.
What do you think?