Media Violence

Thesis: Contrary to the claims that violence in television, motion pictures, video games, and music has no link to the violence being caused in our streets and schools; scientific studies prove otherwise.

I. Exposed Violence

• Television

• Video Games

• Music

II. Effects of Media Violence

• Aggressive Behaviors

• Fear

• Killings

III. Preventing Violence

• Understanding and dealing with violence

• Parental Monitoring

IV. Conclusion

Many have argued on whether or not exposed violence has lead many children and young adults to aggressive and violent behaviors in the real life. It is disturbing to see on the news many young teenagers going into their school and killing other classmates, children under the age of 12 being caught with weapons in school or at home. Contrary to the claims that violence in television, motion pictures, video games, and music has no link to the violence being caused in our streets and schools, it has been proven scientifically and through studies that media violence has caused a big influence.

After researching and reading most of the topics on media violence in the University of Phoenix (UOP) library, I concluded that most articles focused on media violence being the cause of a large percentage of real life violence. Murder rates doubled in the last 10 to 15 years after the introduction of television in the United States, Canada, and the virtually every country where free television was launched, according to Lavers (2004). Those that produce movies, commercials, and games are all corporate companies that are looking to make money one way or another. They solicit all ages. These corporate companies all look for the same thing; how to convince the child into buying their products.

Today it is unfortunate and disturbing to know that everywhere our children and teenagers look to entertainment there is some form of exposed violence. It is unfortunate that as a parent we have to consistently monitor what our children watch or hear. This is due to the violence that has increased in movies and televisions. Lately when I sit down and watch a movie or show on television I truly must say that about 65% of the show or movie is violence and the other 35% is offensive. Let’s not go too far Gangster Rap does often contain graphically violent lyrics that are delivered in an aggressive style, according to Browne (2005). It is so obvious that most rap lyrics deliver an aggressive behavior. Not only have we exposed violence on televisions and in movies, video games have become the primary style of entertainment among our youth. Our children and teenagers have access to video games at home, with a third playing games in their own bedrooms. Children are spending about 30 hours a week playing video games. Children and Teenagers are exposed so much to violence that they continue to watch hours of violence on TV and listen to hours of graphically violent music. Now that internet has been introduced, it is another door opened to ways of exposing violence. Internet allows one to obtain offensive material from around the world free. Internet gives one access to movies, computer games, and music at the tip of your fingers. By making the offensive material easy to access at no charge makes it more entertaining for our children. This is what our society continues to put before our children and teenagers and this is why our children continue to think that it is right.

We need to understand the effect that media violence has on children and young adults. Once desensitization has begun, whether in viewers, addicts, or soldiers, conditioning both operant and classical, reinforces that learned behavior. Operant conditioning teaches you to kill, but classical conditioning is a subtle but powerful mechanism that teaches you like it,” said Grossman a psychologist who studied and taught at West Point, according to Lavers (2004). What is being explained here is that children and teenagers tend to repeat the things they see. We teach our children to repeat the things we do. Repetition is a psychological technique to reduce or eliminate phobias by increasing exposure, which increases tolerance levels, the same paradigm as addiction, according to Lavers (2004). This is a technique used by our commercials. The more a person continues to watch an item on TV, the more he or she is convinced to go out and purchase it. The things that our children are watching on a daily basis for hours and hours will be repeated. It was about two weeks ago when my six-year-old daughter was watching a channel that I was not aware of. It was a martial arts movie being shown on cable. When I came downstairs to the family room, to my surprise I watched her mimicking every move the young girl in the movie was doing. She was engaged in a martial arts fight where one girl was defending her territory.

The effect that movies, music, and video games have on our children is, after repeatedly watching violent shows they end up with the same aggressive behaviors picked up from viewing it. I have heard the phrase “I learned it watching a lot of TV” many times. It does not help much when we see manufacturers making toys that imitate weapons. This just makes matters worse.

Not only does media violence instill aggressive behaviors but it stimulates fear in our

children. Children will start to see the world as violent and mean, making them more fearful of being a victim of violence. How many times have we not seen children who watch horror movies become fearful in real life? It makes it hard for them to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Children and teenagers become afraid because they think violence is everywhere. This feeling becomes long lasting. I have heard people say they have experienced fright effects from images they watched as children. The effects range from sleep disturbances to avoiding certain situations