Effects Of Media Violence On Teenagers

A huge controversy in today’s society is violent video games and their behavioral effect on the children and adults who play them. Violent video games have been blamed for bullying, school shootings, and even violence towards women. Many have fought that violent video games desensitize players to real-life violence, and that they are teaching the youth that violence is an acceptable conflict-solving strategy. Other sources have stated otherwise. The 2004 Secret Service has stated that only one-eighth of attackers have exhibited interests in video games. Violent Video games do not cause violent behavior or behavior problems because it has not been proven that there is a link between violent video games and behavioral issues, playing video games provide a safe outlet for aggressive and angry feelings and reduces violence in young children, and violent juvenile crime has actually gone down since the violent video game popularity has increased.

The article “Violence As Fun” by Randall Sullivan brings up this issue, arguing that parents need to be educated on the dangers of allowing their children to watch violent TV programs. The author supports this with evidence from a report conducted by The American Psychological Association, where they concluded that early substance abuse, access to weapons, isolation, and widespread display of violence in media; the latter being greater, contributes to the violent behaviors in adolescents. He also points out that since the 1950s, aggravated assaults have increased seven times. The passage further emphasizes that many TV outlets know the damaging effects that violence in media has on juveniles, yet only a few acknowledge this fact. Sullivan’s

Moreover, many kids deal with violence and can’t control it. As a result of having issues with violence some people play video games to let their violence and anger out. People need to understand that “ [b]ut overall, violent crime is down in the US-indeed, as violent games have become more popular, violent crime has fallen." (Erik Kain 1) The more popular the game is studies show violent

In America’s daily consumption of media a strange trend has developed in the last couple years. It seems that whenever a real life tragedy occurs many news outlets and politicians tend to place the blame, not in the instigator of these violent acts, but instead in the media they consume which they believed made them this way. "I think there's a question as to whether he would have driven in his mother's car in the first place if he didn't have access to a weapon that he saw in video games that gave him a false sense of courage about what he could do that day." (Murphy) This quote taken from an 2013 debate on a bill to ban assault weapons gives us all the information we need. Violence in media and how it affects violence in real life is misrepresented

This could be opening the doors to a plethora of other cases and assumptions that can lead to our youth potentially becoming killers. Research was conducted on the exposure of television violence and its effects on kids, organizations like the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association and the Academy of Pediatrics have concluded that there is a cause and effect relationship amongst those exposed. However, such studies does not demonstrate that media violence causes aggressive behavior, only that the two phenomena exist together (207). This finding was used to make the assumption that it would likely be the case with video games.

One of the many observed effects of social media is the violent tendencies that seem to become more common in the upcoming generations. Many video games and movies show a lot of violence and these things can sometimes make an impression on the children. Even though there are many studies on media violence on children, there are really no clear answers. But different television, film, video games, etc. have definitely raised the level of violence in children and it continues to rise. Murray, a developmental psychologist, says even though that television and film are just as violent but video games are more worrisome in that it requires the player to be heavily involved in the game, and through repetition

The majority of violence results from social injustice prevalent in our society. Among the significant contributors are poverty, racism, unemployment, and substance abuse. There is also an issue of a proliferation of guns, inadequate or abusive parenting practices, real-life adult models of violent problem-solving behavior, as well as frequent exposure to violence through the media. Consequently, these facts lead to further conjecture such as; has the media desensitized

-Violence is often used in several movies and video games. It is often said that there could be a viable link between violence in the media and violence acted out in society. My mother is an instructional assistant at Spring Creek Elementary, and sees the effects of violent media daily. Several of the boys act out violent games during recess, using their hands as guns to shoot each other. The children have the perception that such violence is okay in certain settings; however, in the realities of today, a school is no place to imitate violence, especially through the use of guns. Most adults are mature enough to handle such violence in the media and appreciate the sense of reality it creates. It best brings certain aspects to life. However it is important that

The newest forms of media violence are things that we use everyday like the internet, cell phones, music, even video games. Almost all youth spend more time each week watching TV. For example, about 90 percent of U.S. youth aged eight to eighteen watch TV and play video games, with boys averaging about nineteen hours a week. Annual surveys of college freshmen over time reveal that as twelfth graders they spend ever-increasing amounts of time playing video games, watching

         My research led me to form some new hypotheses on the correlation of violence in the media, namely television, movies, and video games, to the rise in violent behavior in adolescents. For this essay, I will focus on male adolescents. I will use multiple lenses for my research to (1) establish the increase in violent acts by adolescents in the past two decades; (2) use proven research to show the impact of media violence on the individual; and (3) to illustrate my "recipe for disaster," four correlations that contribute to the effects of media violence on male adolescents.

An article from Psychiatric Times states that a study was done by Ferguson and colleagues that ultimately found that there was no solid linkage between violent media and violence in youth. There is a quote that says “Anything that promotes something can be called propaganda.”, but is an action movie with guns everywhere promoting violence or is it just there for excitement? Studies prove that violent crimes have in fact fallen by roughly 40% and the murder rate dropped half of what it was from 1991 to 2009. Yet the “propaganda” of media suggests that America is a dark, scary place where crime is everywhere and heavy amounts of guns are needed to protect citizens. The author, Arline Kaplan, mentions the two teenage boys from Columbine High School in Colorado, that murdered 12 classmates and teachers and injured 21 others. The news and investigators blamed the boys’ interests in violent media for their acts of terror rather than observing their mental health, home life, or any warning signs previous to the shooting. Later it was discovered that one of the boys was a manic depressive and suicidal, while the other young man showed signs of being a sociopath. This proves that the reasoning behind the shooting had more to do with their mental states rather than heavy metal music and violent video

Media is perhaps one of the most influential methods of relaying information to the public. Since the early 1900s, politicians and educators have blamed violence in media as a prime contributor to societal violence. The Sandy Hook shooting, which resulted in the death of 21 children and six adults, was directly centered on media consumption and a theory quickly evolved that video game violence was to blame. After several in depth studies were conducted, it has been determined that violent media does not lead to societal violence. Researcher Christopher Ferguson from Stetson University, recently published new results with teens in the “Journal of Youth and Adolescence” which indicated that exposure to violence in media neither decreased

Video games and violent movies are having adverse effects on the psychological development of young children. Although not all games and movies are violent, most of the modern video content focus on destruction and violence. Children who play violent games exhibit aggressive behavior than those who do not play or watch violent videos. Too much of violent videogames increases aggressive cognitive and behaviors and decreases prosocial behaviors (Rowan, 2013). These video games are more harmful to those children who already have aggressive behaviors. This trait is more common in boys than

Media violence has a negative impact on children and adolescents. Younger and younger children our beginning to show increasingly violent behavior. There has been continuing speculation over the main cause of this. Not all media promotes violence, however all shows do involve violence and when children are exposed to it, it can easily lead to aggressive behavior. Children at younger ages often imitate the actions of characters or celebrities they see on television. Basically, before age four, children cannot distinguish fact from fantasy and their brains are something like a super-sponge. For example, Brotherson states that the ‘prime time’ for visual and auditory development, or a child 's capacity for learning to see and hear, is from birth to between 4 and 5 years old (2010). So when a child sees actors or actresses making certain gestures, s/he doesn’t know the exact reason for it. Flipping the finger, sticking one’s tongue out, and taunting are all common gestures on television that children will reenact in their lives.

By the time someone is 18, they have already seen about 200,000 violent acts by watching TV (“Television”). As children grow up, they spend a lot of their time in front on the television. They learn from what they can see. The problem is that a lot of violence is shown on TV. This exposes children to actions that they should not see until they are old enough to understand what is happening. The violence in movies and television affect society’s children’s way of growing up because they are exposed to aggressive actions since they are young.