THE EFFECTS OF MEDIA VIOLENCE ON AGGRESSIVENESS IN CHILDREN

The effects of media violence on aggressiveness in children



Media Violence

Although the media can influence society in many ways, the media cannot be blamed for the actions of the public or eliminate the public's responsibility for the problems of society. Violence is a major problem in the United States. In any year, there are more murders in one of the major cities in the United States than in all of the British Isles combined. Media violence is a major issue with our lawmakers, especially those who are running for reelection. Few thought about World War II or the fact that more children were being raised without a father . In the 1970s, Congress instituted a rating system for movies so that parents could judge the amount of violence in movies before they allowed their children to watch them. Then in the 1990s the invention of the V-chip allowed to block television programs with sexually explicit or violent material . No one doubts that media has some effect on behavior. Why else would businesses spend billions of dollars each year on advertising to try to get viewers to do things like buy automobiles, drink soft drinks, and eat pizza. But the outcomes of this effort differ tremendously depending on the life experiences, personality traits, and intelligence of the viewers. Looking at the number of manufactures who change advertising companies each year reveals that these labors fall short of their preferred outcome.Although many people believe that it is true that media violence causes aggression it is doubtful that this idea can ever be proven by methods of science. Canadian psychologist Jonathan Freedman states that less than half of the approximately 200 studies ever done provide any evidence that violent shows evoked aggression in viewers, and studies only found weak correlations. Some of the documented experiments have found that shows like Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood actually cause more aggressive behavior. Even the so-called true believers only believe that at most 10 percent of crime can be blamed on television violence. For the small number of experiments that have produced affirmative results, the results have more to do with the general arousal effects than actually imitating the violent acts being viewed. Laboratory experiments cannot measure real aggression; instead, they measure "proxies" of real aggression like hitting dolls and popping balloons. These experiments also suffer from the "demand effect" in that subjects' respond to what they think is the wanted outcome.There is no magical cure for the dilemma of violent behavior in society. If one could stop society from thinking that once media violence is cleaned up society will also be cleaned up, maybe Americans could get down to the real issues of stopping violence at the source. The lack of parents teaching morals and values to their children is one of the major problems. Crime could be the result of a mental condition, but more often than not it is the result of a ...