VIOLENCE IN MEDIA LEADS TO YOUTH VIOLENCE

Violence In Media Leads To Youth Violence

Violence in media leads to youth violence

Graphic and brutal violence has invaded every aspect of popular culture and is one of the most predominant causes of violence on our society. Although not everybody is affected at the same severity, our entire society is affected in some way. It's not just that music, television, movies, and video games provoke and spark ideas of violence to some, media violence also tends to desensitize the minds of younger audiences.

The first and strongest aspect of media's influence on a violent society is the growing popularity of graphic violence in movies and television. While some think brutal and explicit violence is a fairly recent development, the most extreme form of film violence -the splatter or slasher genre- was launched nearly 40 years ago. This form of "entertainment" features people, primarily teenage girls and young women, being tortured, dismembered, disemboweled, and beheaded, with various construction tools - chainsaws, tool guns, drills, and jig saws -- hence the term "splatter". The violence almost always takes place while the victims are naked or wearing skimpy lingerie. Robert Ressler, a former agent of the FBI and expert on serial murder, believes that these types of films directed at teenage audiences have helped to "fuel the fire" for some serial killers because of the explicit linking of murder and torture with sex(David, 2004).

Young children generally don't understand that in reality, some of these things they see in movies are greatly exaggerated with devastating consequences. Children will be most influenced at this age to attempt something they see in movies because they just don't know better.

With new technological advances, video game manufactures have chosen to amplify graphic violence and have made the carnage in games even more realistic. Seeing that in the United States alone, video game revenues exceed $10 billion annually; this is obviously a large portion of the mass media and has a huge impact on youth.

Unlike the original all-ages video games like Super Mario and Duck Hunt, manufactures are now producing unbelievably violent games like the Duke Nukem series. In this game, the player controls Duke, has he must conquer levels shooting everything in sight with his weapon of choice. Duke travels throughout the streets into strip clubs and pornography shops, where he finds posters of scantily clad women for target practice. In advanced levels bonus points are awarded for the murder of female prostitutes, who are usually naked. Although the video game is rated for adults, action figures are marketed to younger children at such stores like Toys R Us.

In a medical and mental aspect Research specific to video games conducted in the last few years indicates that violent video games cause much greater physiological changes (heart rate, blood pressure, adrenaline, noradrenalin, and testosterone) than non-violent games, and that the harmful effect is much greater for males who pretest high on measures of anger and hostility. An additional concern is that these first person shooter games ...