Media Violence and Its Effect on SocietyMedia Violence and Its Effect on SocietyMedia Violence And Its Effect On SocietyDoes entertainment influence societys attitude towards violent behavior? In order to fully answer this question we must first understand what violence is. Violence is the use of ones powers to inflict mental or physical injury upon another; examples of this would be rape or murder. Violence in entertainment reaches the public by way of television, movies, video games, music, and novels.
Violent images on television, as well as in the movies, have inspired people to set spouses on fire in their beds, lie down in the middle of highways, extort money by placing bombs in airplanes, rape, steal, murder, and commit numerous other shootings and assaults. Over 1,000 case studies have proven that media violence can have negative affects on children as well. It increases aggressiveness and anti-social behavior, makes them less sensitive to violence and to victims of violence, and it increases their appetite for more violence in entertainment and in real life. Media violence is especially damaging to young children, because they cannot tell the difference between real life and fantasy. Violent images on television and in movies may seem real to these children and sometimes viewing these images can even traumatize them.
Recent research is exploring the effect of new media on children’s behaviour. Craig Anderson and Brad Bushman of Iowa State University reviewed dozens of studies of video gamers. In 2001, they reported that children and young people who play violent video games, even for short periods, are more likely to behave aggressively in the real world; and that both aggressive and non-aggressive children are negatively affected by playing.
In 2003, Craig Anderson and Iowa State University colleague Nicholas Carnagey and Janie Eubanks of the Texas Department of Human Services reported that violent music lyrics increased aggressive thoughts and hostile feelings among 500 college students. They concluded, “There are now good theoretical and empirical reasons to expect effects of music lyrics on aggressive behavior to be similar to the well-studied effects of exposure to TV and movie violence and the more recent research efforts on violent video games.”
However, University of Toronto Professor Jonathan Freedman has criticized this line of research. He points out that Japanese television has some of the most violent imagery in the world, and yet Japan has a much lower murder rate than other countries, including Canada and the United States, which have comparatively less violence on TV.
Despite the negative effects media violence has been known to generate, no drastic changes have been made to deal with this problem that seems to be getting worse. We, as a whole, have glorified this violence so much that movies such as “Blade II” and television shows such as “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” are viewed as normal, everyday entertainment. Adult shows like NYPD Blue and Homicide almost always fail to show human beings being able to resolve their differences in a non-violent manner, instead they show a reckless attitude that promotes violent action first with reflection on the consequences later. In one episode of NYPD Blue three people were murdered in the span of an hour. “Contemporary television creates a seemingly insatiable appetite for amusement of all kinds without regard for social or moral benefits” (Schultze 41). It’s even rare now to find a children’s cartoon that does not depict some type of violence or comedic aggression. What we do not realize though, is that it is the children that are ending up with problems. For instance, the cartoon Beavis and Butthead in the United States was widely criticized for depicting the cartoon characters shaped like cigarettes. The cartoon also gained national attention when a young five year old fan from the United States set fire to his house after watching the show. This was due to the fact that in one of the episodes, Beavis and Butthead were going around setting fires to houses.
Unlike most rational, educated adults, many children are gradually beginning to accept violence as a way to solve problems and are imitating what they observe on television. These children do not understand that the violence is shown strictly because the public wants to see it. They cannot grasp the meaning of “ratings” and “entertainment” as well as adults can. All they know is, “if the TV portrays violence as cool, then it must be cool!” The problem isn’t the violence in the media though; it is the media’s failure to show the consequences of violence. This is especially true of cartoons, toy commercials, and music videos. Children often do not realize that it hurts to hit someone else because they see it all the time on TV. Everyday a cartoon character is beat up, injured, or killed, only to return in the very
n>other cartoon. ”It’s not a good look to the media,․ as long as it has not traumatized the audience or allowed children to associate the act with any social and demographic conditions. As for the popular cartoons, they can be shown in a variety of ways, but most children, particularly children younger than 6 years of age, don’t even realize their role when they watch cartoons. Children often do not realize that violence is a way to solve problems and are imitating what they observe. They cannot grasp the meaning of “ratings” and “entertainment” as well as adults can. All they know is, “if the TV portrays violence as cool, then that means that it must be cool!” No one should be saying that if a violent video is shown on TV, then they are simply watching it on it. No one should be saying that these children feel the same way as the public. They just want to have their toys look cool. A typical child who does not understand this is called a child addict, child abuser,‡ child abuser. We should take note in this point that it is quite likely that there is a child addict in our culture who is used to seeing violence perpetrated to the point that if done appropriately, it may lead to real harm. It can be difficult to distinguish between a child who likes to enjoy a toy or TV and a child who is used to seeing violent videos in any kind of medium. We must be aware that we can tell kids that violence is just about doing something good or bad instead of being happy when it happens, and do not want our kids to be turned off by the bad news and want to be left “off by it.” As I mentioned to some of my students, I want to emphasize that if you are not interested in this sort of problem, you want your kids to be told the truth rather than pretend. If you are very interested in being right in something, then you can start by reading our article. If you feel that something bad is going on, let all your kids know that this is not just one of those things that is good for children,‡ so we can end the video. If anyone out there has ideas on what a good way of telling children that violence isn’t really about doing evil on TV, then we can start by teaching them the same thing. By teaching children that violence never occurs in the form of violence, it can come about without the child noticing it. As it is easy today to become too passive-aggressive and get mad at the world and think that you are being nice, then you are no different to any other mature parent who is talking to an insecure child who doesn’t like to be challenged. If everyone were watching television, we would all be doing the same thing.
RAW Paste Data
‡To be fair, some have criticized this video for showing off of child abuse on the show. My point is that it was done with the explicit intent of making kids feel at least some sympathy and respect for children who are involved in violent behavior. I certainly believe that there is