Essay on Media Influence on American Youth

When it comes to the topic of violent media, some of us would readily agree it’s a controversial subject as to whether kids should or shouldn’t be exposed to it. This is because many children who view violent media react negatively rather than not being affected at all. Where this agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of what effects does it have on children. Whereas some are convinced that it is a healthy alternative for kids to express themselves, others maintain that it causes kids to become more aggressive and contributes to juvenile crimes.

The media has the potential to yield many negative effects in the development of a child. Media violence can lead to aggression in children. As mentioned earlier, an average person has viewed approximately 15,000 hours of television by the time they graduate high school. In that time, it is said that almost 18,000 acts of violence including murders, robbery, beating, bombing, and assault will be viewed. With the extent of this data, there is a definite correlation between the media and aggression in youth. The more violence students watch on television or are exposed to from different media sources, the more prone they are to be violent and aggressive as they get older, especially during adulthood. Studies have shown that even small exposure

In Brad Bushman’s and Rowell Huesmann’s Article Short-term and Long-term Effects of Violent Media on Aggression in Children and Adults from the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine journal, they believe the violent media in video games, tv shows, music, and movies, are affecting behavior in children and adults. Bushman and Huesmann believe that all the violence that has made a more popular appearance in today’s culture is causing for adults and children to be more prone to aggression. They hypothesized that the long-term effects would be greater in children and the short-term effects would be greater in adults, and discovered their hypotheses to be correct. Other articles, such as Beth Stein’s If Violent Video Games are Harmless Fun,

Columbine High School massacre. Virginia Tech shootings. Sandy Hook Elementary School slaughter. Umpqua Community College rampage. When someone hears any of these phrases, violent images come to mind. Since the first of these incidents, some questions have been, “Why did this happen? What caused these ‘kids’ to become violent?” One predominant thought has been that violence in media experienced as children, such as video games, could be the reason. Violence in media is common and accepted today. Escalation of violence has increased significantly in movies, video games, and even music videos for years now. This violent trend in media is becoming more and more popular with children, youth, and adults. For instance, the only violence articulated

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.

Students are acting more cruel to one another, than in the past. Shooting in the Dark claims, “Some studies in schools have found that over time digital warriors get into increasing numbers of scrapes with peers — fights in the schoolyard, for example. In a report published last summer, psychologists at Brock University in Ontario found that longer periods of violent video game playing among high school students predicted a slightly higher number of such incidents over time.” There’s more fights in schools with students who play violent games. Do Games like Grand Theft Auto V’ Cause Real-World Violence? claims, “I believe strongly that the media we consume can and does impact our lives in other more subtle ways. “You are what you eat” is an adage that applies equally well to the images and experiences we code into our brains. It may not make us killers, but I find it hard to believe we are simply immune to the things we do on a daily basis.” If “impressionable” children are fed these thoughts from a young age, they could grow up with a more violent

“According to Lt. Col. David Grossman, who wrote Stop Teaching Our Kids to kill, repeated exposure to media violence on TV, movies and especially violent video games is directly connected to aggressive behavior in our children.” Why Video Games Are Bad For America. (2013).

Findings supporting these claims also show that with an increase in violence comes other negative health risks such as an increased likelihood of substance abuse, sexual activity, and obesity(Denniston, Swahn, Feldman, and Romero). Media use, and subsequent exposure to violent content is extremely prevalent among 8 to 18 year old children who spend, on average, 7.4 hours a day using media or computers and 80% of teens have some type of gaming console(Denniston, Swahn, Feldman, and Romero) These claims and the amount of media children are exposed to were concerning enough that the American Academy of Pediatrics started making advisory statements about violent video games and media being health risks for children in 2001. (Hall, Day, and Hall) Since then the link between violent games and violent behavior in youths has been researched across many “population groups”(Denniston, Swahn, Feldman, and Romero). The second theory revolves around any positive effects that might be gained from playing these games (Hall, Day, and Hall). Stating that these may offer “safe” outlets for negative emotions and thusly allowing players to be more emotionally balanced. (Hall, Day, and Hall)

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

There is a strong agreement among American society that violence in the country is on the rise. It is easy to see why this is a strong argument among the American people, especially because of the rising popularity of violent video games and television programs. However, as these violent video games and television shows are creating their own place in our society, the reports of violence among children are escalating. This correlation has been studied extensively in the scientific community in an attempt to discover whether media violence does negatively impact children but there has yet to be a consensus. There is a split between those that believe that children are becoming more violent because they are exposed to violent media and

The media is a huge part in everyone's lives and they have a great influence on the actions we partake in on a daily basis. Though adults don't usualy fall into the pressure of the media, young children and teenagers ae highly sussestable to what the media is telling them to do and what's 'cool'. A major action glorified by the media is smoking and it pressures minors to take up the horrible habit as an attempt to be happy or some how be like their favorite celebrity. Media and holly wood especially have both contributed to an era of people smoking and are a direct cause for the increase of youth smoking today.

As evidence has shown, children view many violent scenes while watching television, movies, or playing video games, but the question still remains: What psychological effect does violence in the media have on children? Research over the past 10 years has consistently shown that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between media violence and real-life aggression (Strasburger 129). Violence in the media can lead to aggressive behavior by children and teenagers who watch the various programs. Of course, not all children who watch television, or movies, or play video games develop aggressive behavior. However, there is a strong correlation between media violence and aggressive behavior. A study, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry, examined how children's television viewing practices are related to aggressive behaviors. The results revealed that children who reported watching greater amounts of television per day had higher levels of violent behavior than children who reported lesser amounts of television viewing (Singer 1041). Witnessing violence is an important determining factor in violent behavior. The media serves as a means for children to witness violence. According to Bandura's Social Learning Theory, children imitate behavior that they see on television, especially if the person performing the behavior is attractive or if the

Impact on cognitive development: Media promotes depression, anxiety and violent behavior in children. This is because many acts of violence are depicted in prime time shows and in video games. “High levels of television viewing are causally related to aggressive behavior and the acceptance of aggressive attitudes” (as cited in Strasburger & Donnerstein, 1999, p. 132). Furthermore, media affects children’s ability to learn. This is because they get used to learning through “song and dance” on edutainment TV shows, and when such excitement is absent at school, they feel it is boring and tend to lose interest in academics (Clean Cut Media, 2010). More and more children are being diagnosed with attention disorders because they tend to multi-task while using media, by listening to music, chatting online, watching TV etc., at the same time (Clean Cut Media, 2010). An advantage of the internet is that it promotes learning through interactive media and interesting content, but utilizing it depends on the choice of the children.

For years, many researchers have done individual studies on how media affects children. A review, which analyzed 173 of the strongest papers over 28 years, found that “80% of researchers are in agreement that heavy media exposure increases the risk of harm to children, including obesity, smoking, early engagement in sexual activity, drug and alcohol use, attention problems, and poor grades” (Szabo).

          Due to violence on television, children become less sensitive to that pain and suffering of others or to become more aggressive to others. It also makes children more fearful to the world around them. (Abelard 1) Viewing habits of children observed for many decades deduced that violence on TV is associated with aggressive behavior, more than poverty, race, or parental behavior. It also reported that a TV show contains about 20 acts of violence an hour.