Media And Aggressive-Disruptive Behavior

3. After recent violent shooting such as the Sandy Hook massacre, there has continued to be growing concern about violent media and its effect on youth. The research topic was chosen because we want to see if there is a link between aggression and violent media. We are primarily interested in if a person specifically and adolescent becomes more violent after watching, reading, or playing violent media.

After reviewing many case studies about whether excessive or extensive violent television news coverage leads towards violent conduct is up for debate. Interestingly enough many scientific organizations have openly stated that violent media coverage causes aggression, and examined the association between media violence and violent behavior. It has been reported that there has been more than 3,500 research studies to prove that there is in fact a connection between media violence and violent behavior. Out of these 3,500 studies only 18 of them have not been able to relate media violence and violent behavior. Clearly there is overwhelming evidence to prove this relationship is accurate,

Violent video games, movies and television shows have become the subject of large debates that may have lasted since the beginning of media. Everyone knows that people have the ability and desire to imitate what they experience in the media, and given the perceived increase in violence among children in the U.S., the media is seen as a major possible explanation. In the following, we will examine the evidence pertaining to whether the media is becoming more violent over time, how much violence is in the media, and what kind of psychological connection or causal influence there may be between children’s violent behavior and their favorite types of media. It will be argued that the type of media as well as other cultural and environmental factors, are the key variables in determining whether violent behavior was caused by media, focusing specifically on the influence of video games considering they permit children the most realistic and interactive experiences of violence compared to all media.

Violent media has been proven time and time again over the past 60 years to cause increased aggression in children and young adults. The long term and short term exposure to violent media has been shown to cause “increased feelings of hostility, expectations that others will behave aggressively, desensitization to the pain of others, and increased likelihood of interacting and responding to others with violence” (Committee on Public Education). One of the most famous experiments done on the subject was done in 1961 by the psychologist Albert Bandura at Stanford University. In this experiment children between the ages of three and six were put in a playroom containing a many activities and toys (Cherry). One of those toys was a bobo doll; a 5 foot tall inflatable doll. An adult would enter and either play with the child from a complete ten minutes, the control group, or at some point during those ten minutes begin beating up the doll, the experimental group. They would also say things such as “pow” and “he keeps coming back for more” while attacking it (Cherry).

For years now, researches have been studying the correlation between violent media and the aggression in children. Undoubtedly the conclusion is that violent media does indeed increase the aggressive nature in kids.

Many studies show that children are more prone to violence due to a child’s undeveloped brain. “Children who are regularly exposed to more violent media have an increased probability of behaving more aggressively in real life (Anderson).” Furthermore, children nowadays are exposed to excessive amounts of violence in media, increasing their risks of violence when older (Anderson). Anderson explains, children are likely to become “emotionally desensitized to the violence” being portrayed. Negative actions may happen without concern or acknowledgement that something is wrong (Anderson). According to Anderson, young children will be meaner and more aggressive. The more contact with media violence a child gets, the more likely they are to be aggressive, as he or she gets older

In Brad Bushman’s and Rowell Huesmann’s Article Short-term and Long-term Effects of Violent Media on Aggression in Children and Adults from the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine journal, they believe the violent media in video games, tv shows, music, and movies, are affecting behavior in children and adults. Bushman and Huesmann believe that all the violence that has made a more popular appearance in today’s culture is causing for adults and children to be more prone to aggression. They hypothesized that the long-term effects would be greater in children and the short-term effects would be greater in adults, and discovered their hypotheses to be correct. Other articles, such as Beth Stein’s If Violent Video Games are Harmless Fun,

This could be opening the doors to a plethora of other cases and assumptions that can lead to our youth potentially becoming killers. Research was conducted on the exposure of television violence and its effects on kids, organizations like the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association and the Academy of Pediatrics have concluded that there is a cause and effect relationship amongst those exposed. However, such studies does not demonstrate that media violence causes aggressive behavior, only that the two phenomena exist together (207). This finding was used to make the assumption that it would likely be the case with video games.

For a child, almost any type of conflict, such as a heated discussion on a radio talk show or between two experts during a newscast, may seem as aggressive as two comic book characters throwing anvils. As of yet, we do not have a clear explanation of what causes violence and aggression in our youth, whether we analyze media content or explore the everyday aggressive behavior that may cause violent behavior, Individual studies define these notions in a lot of different ways; Thus, the rules of the game are constantly changing for those who try to analyze the situation as a whole. The difficulty in quantifying aggression and violence in ways that make it almost impossible to answer the following question: "Does violence in the media cause people to commit acts of violence? "

Numerous studies conducted in the past have clearly demonstrated that exposure to media violence does have a significant influence on violent and aggressive behavior. This is particularly the case amongst children where fictional media violence has been linked to increased aggression both in the short-term and in the long-term. This text highlights the extent to which media violence is related to violent/aggressive behavior.

There are indicators that links playing violent video games to increasing aggression in young people. Teenagers who are expose to violent games are more supposable to increase the likelihood of experiencing aggressive thoughts, in which turns into the likelihood of engaging in physical aggression against another person. Furthermore, violent video games produce an emotional desensitization to aggression and violence to the youth (Anderson). Based on the observation teenagers are exposed to when they are playing violent video games, they will reenact almost immediately in real life if the situational contact is sufficiently similar to the ones in the games. Therefore, consumption of violent video games produces negative behaviors that are controlled by negative

Risky behavior by children and young adults can include violence against others or lack of remorse for consequences. The type of faulty thinking creates stressors in children which can lead to the onset of many symptoms. Children who partake in video game violence are more likely to have increased feelings of hostility, decreased emotional response to the portrayal of violence, and injury that lead to violent behavior through imitation. A new study employing state-of-the-art brain-scanning technology says that violent video games can cause an individual to become violent. Researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine say that brain scans of kids who played a violent video game showed an increase in emotional arousal and a corresponding decrease of activity in brain areas involved in self-control, inhibition, and attention. In short, when playing a violent game, an individual’s brain processes the game playing as “fictional”, but later can project some of the unknown effects as violence or aggression.

Video games and television can contribute to violent behavior and aggression but they are not always violent or

In this era of internet connectivity, access to an array of violent media stimuli is readily available. Scientific exploration of the effects of such exposure on real world violent behaviour carries potential ramifications for the safety of global communities. Media violence is understood here as stimuli that includes depictions of violence or calls to violent action and includes image, video, television and gaming. Violent behavior is defined as behavior causing emotional or physical harm expressed verbally or physically. Whilst there remains no causal proof for the

As evidence has shown, children view many violent scenes while watching television, movies, or playing video games, but the question still remains: What psychological effect does violence in the media have on children? Research over the past 10 years has consistently shown that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between media violence and real-life aggression (Strasburger 129). Violence in the media can lead to aggressive behavior by children and teenagers who watch the various programs. Of course, not all children who watch television, or movies, or play video games develop aggressive behavior. However, there is a strong correlation between media violence and aggressive behavior. A study, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry, examined how children's television viewing practices are related to aggressive behaviors. The results revealed that children who reported watching greater amounts of television per day had higher levels of violent behavior than children who reported lesser amounts of television viewing (Singer 1041). Witnessing violence is an important determining factor in violent behavior. The media serves as a means for children to witness violence. According to Bandura's Social Learning Theory, children imitate behavior that they see on television, especially if the person performing the behavior is attractive or if the