Effects Of Media Violence On Children

Effects of Media Violence

The effect of media violence seems to be a heated debate among researchers and the public as well. According to David Gauntlett, “despite many decades of research and hundreds of studies, the connections between people’s consumption of the mass media and their subsequent behavior have remained persistently elusive.” (Gauntlett, 1998). He also states “that the media effects research has quite consistently taken the wrong approach to the mass media, its audiences, and society in general.” (Gauntlett, 1998). I agree with this statement, I think that the environmental and cultural influences have been neglected in the majority of the research done on this topic.

In all the research that I have read through, I have found that the researchers involved have many disagreements. I went to the Media Awareness Network website and found an article where Andrea Martinez did a review of all the scientific writing for a Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. “She concluded that the lack of consensus about media effects reflects three “grey areas” or constraints contained in the research itself.” (Media Awareness Network, Par. 2) The three “grey areas” are that media violence is hard to define, researchers disagree over the relationship, and those that agree argue the way that one affects the other. It seems that the effect of media violence is hard to research and prove the kind of connection it has with aggressive behavior. In my opinion, it is hard to prove the relationship because there are too many external factors that need to be taken into consideration. Environmental and cultural influences, to me, seem like an important part that needs to be considered and in all the research I have seen it is not. According to Martinez, there is “a positive, though weak, relation between exposure to television violence and aggressive behavior.”

Violence in the media can have different effects. I personally feel that it differs from each person, but also that it depends on each individual’s environmental and cultural influences. According to one website, there are four different psychological effects that can occur from violence in the media, they are Direct, Desensitization, Mean World Syndrome, and Catharsis. In the direct effect individuals who watch a lot of violence on television could attain aggressive behavior or be more favorable towards violence. I feel that the way the media portrays certain things is done in a way to purposely affect people’s emotions. There are certain instances where I do feel that the violence being shown in the media can cause anger, but it is in the way it is represented not because of the violence contained in it. In desensitization, the viewer may become less sensitive to violence occurring and less sensitive to the pain violence can cause. People who live in violent environments or cultures see violence a lot and can become desensitized to violence and therefore would be prone to act aggressively. When living in these environments it becomes more of a learned behavior rather than a reaction to the violence in the media. With Mean World Syndrome, the viewers may begin to view their environment as a violent place. To me, I would think the people that develop this syndrome are sensitive to what they see or are involved in. For someone to honestly believe that the world around them is a violent place and to not see the good that does occur is extremely hard for me to understand. Catharsis can possibly be a positive effect by actually reducing the aggression. I feel that these effects would have a lot to do with the individual as well as their environment as to how they will be affected. I have noticed though, that most of the research does seem to leave out the environmental and cultural effects. These effects, to me, seem to have a big influence on whether or not there would be a connection between media violence and aggressiveness.

The Media Awareness Network had a lot of other articles pertaining to media violence, but the majority of the research had been done with children. One experiment in particular seems to have stuck in my mind because of the age of the children involved. I unfortunately did not print up this article and cannot find it online anymore. From what I recall, they showed a certain group of 2-3 year olds a violent cartoon while showing another group a non-violent cartoon. When they put both groups in the same room to play, the toddlers that watched the violent cartoon were more aggressive than the toddlers that did not watch the violent cartoon. Many other researchers however stated that this study wasn’t very useful because cartoons are meant for comedic relief. In this study, it makes sense that the toddlers acted aggressively because that is what they had just seen. Toddlers, especially at this age, imitate what they see and hear. Since they were shown violence they acted out what they had seen. I do not think this would be an accurate way to test the effects of media violence or to prove a relationship between media violence and aggressive behavior, I think it showed that an individual would need to reinforce the toddler letting them know that what they see is not what they should do. If someone were to teach them this then they will know when they are older that they should not be violent or aggressive. Young children have yet to learn that violence is not the answer, and in a normal setting, the child behaving aggressively would be corrected so they would know that it was the wrong thing to do.

In my personal opinion I feel there is no correlation between media violence and aggressive behavior, if there is a correlation I believe it to be a very weak one. Correlational method is defined in our book as, “a numerical value that indicates the strength and direction of the relationship between two variables.” (Wood, Wood, and Boyd, 2004). Therefore, a correlation would be whether or not there is a relationship and if there is how strong or weak that relationship is. My personal belief is that just because an individual watches