The Influence of Media Violence on Youth

Media has been around for centuries, which includes television and radio. However, as the years went by technology developed thus creating the internet, video games, and other sorts of media. Today, there is a lot of controversy and different perspectives as to media being a major influence of violent behavior for children and young adults. There has been extensive amount of studies and research on media influencing the youth to have aggressive thinking or act violently towards other people or themselves.

Craig A. Anderson et al., designed a research study in which they examined the likelihood of aggressive and violent behavior in both short term and long term contexts. Berkowitz (1975) gave boys in two cottages to watch violent movies every night for five nights while the boys in the other two cottages watched nonviolent films. Every evening after the movie was over; the boys were observed interacting and were rated for their frequency of chocking, slapping, and hitting their cottage mates. Data suggests that there was a larger effect of physical aggression for the boys who were initially more aggressive than the boys who were initially less aggressive. This study demonstrates that violent movies can create physical aggression.

Music videos and lyrics are also a contributing factor to the influence of violence among children and young adults. Barongan and Hall (1995) reported a study suggesting that antisocial lyrics without video can affect behavior, but the observed behavior was not aggressive. In this study, male college students listened to misogynous or neutral rap music and viewed three episodes (neutral, sexual and violent, and assaultive), and then chose one of the episodes to be shown to an unknown female who was actually one of the researchers. The males who had listened to the misogynous music were more likely than those in the neutral music setting to select the assaultive episode. This study shows that music videos can affect an adolescent’s aggressive thinking and attitudes.

In the recent years, video games have become one of the main attractions for children, adolescents, and adults.  Video games now surpassed violent TV shows and music videos due to the amount of violent context it demonstrates. Kids are spending large amount of time playing video games that are exposing them to becoming aggressive beings. For example, Irwin and Gross (1995) examined physical aggression like hitting, shoving, pinching, pulling at clothes, and kicking between boys who had played either a violent or a nonviolent video game. Results showed that those who played the violent video games demonstrated aggressive thoughts, emotions, and physical arousal.

By the time a typical child finishes elementary school, he or she will have seen approximately 8,000 murders and more than 100,000 other acts of violence on TV (Huston et al., 1992). There has been extensive amount of research and experiments performed to prove that the exposure to media violence increases aggression and violence among children, adolescents, and adults. Media violence increases aggressive thoughts which create a physiological arousal which triggers aggressive behavior. It is important to make an effort to address the role of media in the life of the youth so that they may grow up to be patient and coherent individuals.

• How does media violence produce its effects on violent behavior?

Popular Article: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/pspi/pspi43.pdf

~Jessica Aragones~