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The Impact of Media Violence Essays

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Media Violence and its negative impact has been discussed and debated for many years As children grow into teens they encounter as vast amount of violence in the media, negatively impacting today’s youth. Teenagers who are exposed to media violence will fail to develop effective socialization strategies and resort more readily to violence, which makes society a more dangerous place. Through social contact, individuals learn to think and act in certain ways, this type of learning is called socialization. One of the most influential agents of socialization is mass media. Children spend an average of four hours in front of a television each day, and with each passing hour, they witness between twenty and twenty-five aggressive acts …show more content…

They cause disruptions in neighborhoods and put the lives of their neighbors in danger by getting involved with a life of crime. Everything these individuals learned was by observing it on the television, this is known as the imitation effect (Phillips). What they observed was violence, so they learned to be violent.
The way people behave and problem solve is also impacted from exposure to violence in the media. Jeffery Johnson, of Columbia University, conducted an experiment in which he observed over seventy families within seventeen years, focusing on their viewing habits and various behavioral tendencies, finding that the amount of televisions watched during childhood increased the likelihood of behaving aggressively (Phillips). This experiment is one of many showing that media violence directly impacts behaviour, and has people resorting more readily to violence. Not only does violence in the media have an impact on the way people behave socially, but according to a study done by Dimitri Christakis of the University of Washington, children who watched double the average television viewing hours were twenty-five percent likely to be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. (Phillips) People diagnosed with ADHD have difficulty focusing, are overactive, and often cannot control their behaviour, disrupting the way people do things ("ADD / ADHD in Children"). Being in a classroom or on the job with someone who has ADHD will not only affect

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