Media Violence Statistics

THESIS STATEMENT: The world’s media today seem to have more violence than ever. Video games have vivid depictions of accident catastrophes, fighting and murder. Television news programs generally lead with a violent story in order to gain an audience. This is free society people can stay what they want. ‘’ Media violence has many negative effect on youth today to commit crimes in society.’’

Violent video games, movies and television shows have become the subject of large debates that may have lasted since the beginning of media. Everyone knows that people have the ability and desire to imitate what they experience in the media, and given the perceived increase in violence among children in the U.S., the media is seen as a major possible explanation. In the following, we will examine the evidence pertaining to whether the media is becoming more violent over time, how much violence is in the media, and what kind of psychological connection or causal influence there may be between children’s violent behavior and their favorite types of media. It will be argued that the type of media as well as other cultural and environmental factors, are the key variables in determining whether violent behavior was caused by media, focusing specifically on the influence of video games considering they permit children the most realistic and interactive experiences of violence compared to all media.

On average an American is exposed to approximately 200,000 violent acts before the age of eighteen. However, these exposures do not influence an individual to exhibit violence. Concerns regarding whether television and video game violence has a negative effect on society by promoting violence, dates back to the 1950’s and is still prevalent today. Studies and research conducted on the issue are unable to prove that the two variables have any correlation to each other. In fact, statistics demonstrate how the amount of violent crimes has decreased significantly throughout time despite growing video game popularity. Lastly, in society people look for anything to transfer the blame, especially in regards to a situation that may threaten an individual’s society. As a matter of fact, by reviewing the extensive research the conclusion was drawn stating exposure has no effect on violence. Therefore, television and video game violence does not have a negative effect on society.

John Leo’s “When Life Imitates Video” is a persuasive work against violent media with children. Many of Leo’s points are first person with reaching correlations between violent media and life violence. Leo states that many of school shootings are related to video games. One of facts, he states is that because of shooters aiming for heads means they received that from videogames. Even if that was true, the way he states it may not have been the correct way. Leo’s stretch of the correlation between both real-life violence and media violence was unsupported. Leo’s work was supported by personal opinions on each issue at hand. If he could add statistic into the work, then he could have appealed with the ethos and pathos of the work. His major point to consider is that violent media is an opening for real life violence. As media violence creates a sense of violence being an acceptable thing in society, and it must be stopped at the source. While the need to stop violent media to prevent major massacres or school shootings is important, it’s also equally important to understand that it isn’t the only thing to create these incidents. Many factors contribute to these incidents for the future.

Americans have been blaming violent forms of entertainment since colonial times. From dime novels to music, to movies to television shows. The most recent medium are video games. Aided by crime-saturated news reports, a lot of people are convinced that video game violence transfers to real-life youth crimes like the school massacres. They think that violent video games make people violent, but that is not the case. Violent people play violent video games. Not everyone who plays video games are violent, but those who already are violent will play them as an outlet for their frustration and rage. If anything, video games keep violent people from going out and killing people in real life because they can vent in the virtual world.

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

The last reason that the representation of violent media is wrong is because, while video game and movie consumption is going up homicide rates are going down. As we see in the graph they follow each other for a little while but eventually go their separate

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,

But Dr. Elizabeth Carll, who helped this study, wanted to clear up the confusion, "the resolution did not state that there was a direct causal link to an increase in teen violence as a result of playing videogames” (Flanagan). “Constant news coverage leaves the impression that youthful crime is increasing”(Olson) news stories continue to slaughter the idea that people who play games are just normal people in society and not just antisocial, angry people sitting in their mom’s basements. Olson presents, “Some have referred to a "wave of violence gripping America 's youth," fueled by exposure to violent media. Using data supplied to the FBI, the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention reported that the rate of juvenile arrests increased in the late 1980s, peaking in 1994. Juvenile arrests declined in each of the next 7 years” (Olson) with this data presented by the Federal Bureau of Intelligence people are displaying even less aggressive tendencies especially children who are exposed to video games. It is not just the information going unbelieved, but also the studies have been discredited alongside the idea of video games are getting worse as media continues to slander players for aggressive actions and shut-in traits. "From the present body of literature, there 's nothing that supports a relationship between violent videogame playing and aggression—not correlational or

This leads to lack of sympathy for victims of violence, notably in children. The surgeon general, National Health Institute and other professional medical organizations such as the American Medical Association and American Psychological Association have linked exposure to media violence to societal violence. The author argues that these studies may not be of considerable importance to claim that media violence is a public health risk. There other factors that are of more concern for societal violence such as being male or female, socioeconomic status, and intelligence. More research needs to be done before arguing media violence has a role in societal violence. I chose this article because it associates societal violence with the film industry. We see how different members of the film industry respond after a violent school shooting committed by an adolescent male. It shows opposing views of whether or not media violence affects behaviour, stating that the general public doesn’t believe it plays a role in

Violence has never been a stranger to our world, but with the introduction of the digital media, such as movies and video games, the violence has been pinned on those platforms. When it comes to violence in society, digital media should not be blamed for the reasons that violence has

Aggression was significantly and positively correlated with exposure, as found in prior research. This may indicate that exposure to violent videogames is a risk factor for aggressive behavior. However, it is also possible, given the correlational nature of this and other studies, that highly aggressive individuals actively seek out more aggressive games, or that the relationship between exposure and aggression is due to some as yet unidentified third variable. It is also of note that exposure correlated most strongly with physical aggression, and showed a nonsignificant correlation for verbal aggression. This result (based on sample of men) can perhaps best be understood with reference to prior research, in which Moller and Krahe (2009) found that males were more physically aggressive than females, whereas females were more relationally aggressive than males. Further, while exposure was significantly correlated with anger, it was not correlated with hostility. The authors of the AQ defined anger as physiological arousal and preparing oneself to act in an aggressive way, whereas hostility was defined as ill will towards another individual that is not expressed violently. This suggests that playing violent games is more strongly associated with preparing to perform violent acts than with simply having ill

​Over the many years media has had a tremendous impact on society. Media has been responsible for shaping the culture for generations through music, movies and television. It seems logical that since the media has an influence on society’s norms when the media promotes violence and crime the audiences become more likely to imitate those behaviors. The media has been known to contribute to the violent culture through music, art, television and movies (action, suspense and horror); Movies and music where the dominant violent roles were occupied by men and when they involved women they were often accomplices or accessories to the crime. Although they may be amusing they are also exposing the

At first, one would not realize the pervasiveness of violence. However, after having discussed this topic over the semester, violence has come to be referred to as an epidemic. After just a few lectures, we began analyzing different texts and learned how society has normalized the use of violence by transforming violent acts into forms of entertainment through various media outlets; in turn, causing desensitization to violence. Through media exposure and awareness of existing societal roles, I have come to realize that violence is a bigger issue than initially thought. Moreover, the opinions that I originally held at the beginning of this course have come to change after viewing topics through an enlightened outlook.

A major opposition to violence video games leading to aggression is that the research that was done is not a valid research. Henry Jenkins said “...most of those studies are inconclusive and many have been criticized on methodological grounds” (2). The studies are not inconclusive because in the studies that the researchers do they