This author of this paper argues that disintegrating social institutions such as the family and the neighborhood, traditionally serving as cultural vehicles for identity development, have been replaced by less personal forms of social and recreational involvement achieved through technological advances in advertising, communications, transportation, and the entertainment industry. As such, the traditional community is being displaced as a vehicle for self-identification by a community of simulated environments, mobile and transient social patterns, and the increasingly intrusive presentation of imagery, primarily through videotechnology. The media which transmit images, ideas, and information are no longer simply conveying information. The media's success has relied on creating need and insecurity, thereby transforming lifestyles. In turn, the author hypothesizes, the media themselves also are transformed by public demand. If correct, the media are being transformed in terms of the content they present to the public to reflect a society which they have helped to create, i.e., the reason that the media are producing more hedonistic and violent products is because society has created public demand for these kinds of products. The author explores, inter alia, the disposable nature of society, immediate gratification replacing long-term commitment to goals and achievement behavior, the role of image in self and boundary formation including the bounded self, image preservation, image fixation, and character adaptations to image fixation. The author concludes that, in modern society, the bounded self spurred on by unprecedented affluence and technological advances, has become magnified by its exploitative and wasteful regard toward human relations. Because of this philosophical premise by which people regard one another, rather than bringing people closer together, the mass media have contributed to grandiose and exploitative images of self and human relations while simultaneously offering sanctuary from community development. In the realm of mental health, disorders of self reflect a society suffering from alienation and addicted to the immediate gratification our media offer in abundance as a palliative for the failure of the family and community to provide safety and self-pride as they once did. 38 references