The Effects Of Mass Media On Teens

How and why does mass media influence aggressive behavior? More specifically, does playing video games cause aggressive behavior? Because children and teenagers spend an increased amount of time each day viewing/playing video games, they are shaping their values, attitudes, and behaviors. For people who do act out aggressively, the results can be deadly. Monthly, the news is filled with blood-chilling accounts of crimes committed due to a copy-cat obsession with violent video games. This paper will present a brief review of literature and reveal the difficulties in answering this question with certainty.

The media can have both positive and negative effects on anyone especially teenage girls. I personally think one of the problems with the media is the unrealistic images that they put out there. They put these images out there and make it seem like if you don’t look like this you wont be happy, successful, or accepted by anyone. Duke University statistic says “40% of all 9 and 10-year-old girls have already been on a diet”. This is a huge problem today and a problem that is just going to continue to get worse. Many people don’t understand or know just what effects the media has on teenage girls. I hope you can see what it does to their body image, problems they get from it and the eating disorders they could possibly

“Approximately 90 percent of kids in the U.S. play video games, and more than 90 percent of those games involve mature content that includes violence.”-(Time Health). The link between violent media and aggression in video games has also created a spawn of research studies that has gone back and forth on the issue of whether

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,

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.

The United States of America has endured many massacres throughout the countries existents leaving scars in Americans hearts that will never cease to exist. One of these scars was left on Americans during a massacre in Littleton, Colorado leaving fifteen people dead including two shooters and twenty one injured. Many Americans wonder who and why anyone would do such massacres, especially on their own country. Although social media, video games, and television can be used for education and positive influence; it is often blamed for such acts of violence including the shooting at Columbine. The issue concerning social media in American and its effect on their youth are likely to be debated, but there is

These experimental studies find a strong relationship between playing violent video games and increasing in aggressive thoughts. Also, these studies revealed significant effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior, cognition, and on prosocial behavior. This article provides evidence in my argument on how significant exposure to violent video game tends to increase the risk of developing aggressive behavior in real life. Furthermore, children exposed to violent material via the media potentially develop increased attitudes of hostility and show decreased emotional response to violent acts against others.

In today’s society there has been an ongoing debate regarding the effects of violent video games and the development of today’s youth. Many people believe that the violence in video games promotes aggression. According to Doctor Brad Bushman’s article, "Do Violent Video Games Increase Aggression?" he claims that violent video games leads to aggression because it is interactive process that teaches and rewards violent behavior. Yet others believe that this not the case. Gregg Toppo of the Scientific American, writes in his article, “Do Video Games Inspire Violent Behavior?” that video games are not a significant issue because teenagers know how differentiate between reality and fantasy. Because of the controversy surrounding this topic, I decided to research the question, “Does exposure to violent video games cause aggressive behavior among teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18?” Initially before performing any extensive research on this subject, I hypothesized that violent video games do cause aggressive behavior. I then proceeded to study different scholarly works that both supported and opposed my hypothesis. What I learned from those works eventually gave me a more complete understanding of the topic and allowed me to take a more educated stance.

The inquiry whether violent entertainment affects a child's brutal behavior is an argument that has been disputed upon for several years. Most researches performed have concluded that violence in the media does not relate to the acts of a child, unless the child has been exposed to various types of environments. Other research is clearly lacking a direct causal relationship between violent video games and youth violence (MassGeneral,2012). Children's acts of violence are determined by what or with whom they are associated with.

Adolescents are an interesting population to work with. A lot of social workers avoid working with them because they can be intimidating as the filter on them is limited depending on the young person you are working with. I have been working with teens since 2007 and I have never experienced one being like another. For the young people, there is a lot that influences who they are as a person. The biggest influence will be their parents followed by their friends. Aside from that, there is religion, school, T.V/media, ETC. When doing an assessment it is important to gather as much information as possible yet be aware that this age range has issues that are more pertinent to this age than other age ranges. The biggest ones are body image and sexuality.

There are indicators that links playing violent video games to increasing aggression in young people. Teenagers who are expose to violent games are more supposable to increase the likelihood of experiencing aggressive thoughts, in which turns into the likelihood of engaging in physical aggression against another person. Furthermore, violent video games produce an emotional desensitization to aggression and violence to the youth (Anderson). Based on the observation teenagers are exposed to when they are playing violent video games, they will reenact almost immediately in real life if the situational contact is sufficiently similar to the ones in the games. Therefore, consumption of violent video games produces negative behaviors that are controlled by negative

Research has greatly indicated and proven that media exposure has an impact on the normative perceptions of substance use and relationship behaviors among adolescents. Studies have shown that media content and patterns of usage are considerably related to adolescent perception of gender roles, romantic relationships, and sexual behavior. Repeated contact or subjection to sexualize subject matter on television or different forms of media has been related to individuals perceived normative gender roles (Herrett- Skjellum & Allen, 1996). Negative and socially impaired beliefs about relationships, for example such as ‘‘fate brings soul-mates together, disagreement is destructive to a relationship, partners should be able to sense each other’s thoughts and feelings’’ (Holmes, 2007). Also with persistent disclosure to sexually explicit content related with more positive attitudes or norms toward “uncommitted sexual exploration” as well (Brown and Bobkowski, 2011).

about ninety percent of these games contain some violent material, and forty percent of these games reveal hostility towards characters (Glaubke et al., 2001). In our world today, most individuals will speculate that letting adolescents indulge in these types of games will only cause harm and nothing ever good will ever uproot from it. For example, after looking into 136 research studies, (Anderson, 2010) observed that being exposed to violence within video games was connected with increased levels of hostile behavior, hostile cognition, hostile affect, and loss in prosocial behavior (Anderson, 2010). Adolescents with higher levels aggression tend to lean towards playing more violent video games rather that nonviolent video games. According to (Exelmans, Custers, & Van den Bulck, 2015) The general aggression model “GAM” is a social cognitive model that describes the short- and long-term effects of exposure to media violence on aggressive behavior (Exelmans,Custers, & Van den Bulck, 2015). The GAM consists of a three-stage process. The first stage expresses, trait hostility and being apparent to violence expressed through media content could influence the access of hostile thoughts and emotions (Exelmans, Custers, & Van den Bulck, 2015). The next stage, consists of a process taking place that can result in hostile behavior carrying over into the next episode cycle (Exelmans, Custers, & Van den Bulck, 2015). The Short-term

The questions posed for Psychology this week is “Do violent video games increase aggressive thoughts and behaviors?” After reading chapter five in the “Psych” textbook, the obvious answer would be yes. There are countless studies that show that watching violence increase emotional arousals, aggressive behavior, and violent thoughts (Rathus 128). The studies also indicate that violent video games are also connected with aggressive behavior and an increase in aggressive thoughts (Rathus 128). Many video gamers would disagree with the numerous studies that have been done; however, if the studies prove aggression, then that is something you have to accept. The studies are not a one size

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