Media Violence Promotes Violent BehaviorEssay Preview: Media Violence Promotes Violent BehaviorReport this essayMedia Violence Promotes Violent BehaviorAbstractAmerica and media violence have always been a topic for people to discuss. There has never been a definite answer to rather violence in the media is copyed by the public. When people talk about who it effects they are always talking about children.
This research paper will explore both sides of the argument. This topic stops parents from letting their children watch certain shows while other parents believe it has no effect. This paper will show that violence in the media has no direct correlation on the rise or fall of violence by children.
IntroductionMedia violence has always been a big topic in America. The debate has never been decided upon. There are multiple studies that say that it does promote violence while others say that it is completely unrelated. Media violence is a form of entertainment that parents believe can effect their children negatively. Even though it is fake in the movies many people believe that children will believe it is cool and want to follow the example. They believe that children will not be able to distinguish between reality and the media. Even though no direct correlation has been made between the two most parents believe that it does but in reality they just do not want their children subjected to violent material. The media has become more daring with the material that they put on television. Over the decades the envelope on what is acceptable has been pushed to the point where there is almost nothing censored and everything is acceptable. Even though there is more violence on TV there is still no clear answer to rather it has promoted violence in children.
Literature ReviewArguments saying that violence does promote violenceEighty three percent of children under six years old use some form of screen media (Kaiser 2006). That means that almost all children have seen violence on television. Studies show that when children watch violence that they become aggressive which translates into anger which can turn into violence. Short-term exposure increases the likelihood of physically and verbally aggressive behavior, aggressive thoughts, and aggressive emotions (Anderson 2003). Craig Anderson of the department of psychology at Iowa State studies show that even a short amount of time watching violent programs can cause this aggression. So parents that try to limit their childs viewing in reality does nothing to stopping the aggression that could build and cause violence. People believe that children are taught to solve their problems by being violent towards whoever they do not like. Since the nation has greatly advanced in technology and children have so many more options to be entertained such as video games people believe that the violence is a major problem. Video games have become more realistic and violent in recent years. In violent video games players are encouraged to be as aggressive as possible and to kill as many things as they can. People believe that children are becoming numb to violence which could cause them to not understand the real effects that it has when they use aggression in real life situations. No long term effects have been proven though so even though children could be only subjected to a limited amount of violence from these video games the effects are still there. Those effects have been shown to only last for a short time period. Even though the results are non conclusive it is still untimely up to the parents to decide if a television show or video game is suitable for the child or not.
Arguments saying that violence does not promote violenceEven though parents might not like the new fondness of violence in the media the violence rate in America has actually gone down in the past years. The overall story is that homicide rates declined substantially (as did rates of interpersonal violence of all sorts)(Blumstein 2000). In a graph by Blumstein he shows that the America homicide rate has dropped signifitely in the past fifteen years. Even though America is more violent then most other countries our nation has personally improved the violence rate. This shows that there is no correlation in the recent violence explosion in the media and real life violence in the nation. So even though adults believe that their children are becoming more violent there is no proof of this. The surgeon general released a report in 2001 on youth violence stating that the types of crimes such as aggravated assault and robbery have gone down as well. Children are more likely to be involved in these minor
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To give you an idea of the level of violence in America, you have to remember and watch the recent spate of anti-abortion legislation across the nation, a pattern that has been mirrored over the past five years in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
The Arizona legislature was asked to consider in January 2014 the possibility of legislation prohibiting all abortions performed in rural settings, a measure that also passed. The California legislature is now considering the same legislation as in the United States and in Iowa, both of which have passed. So did North Carolina, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, but by a relatively small margin.
The first year on the House floor of the House of Representatives, three men were arrested for attempted rape in their hotel room. The law currently has a Republican majority, but they were one of four state legislators who voted against it. They have to make their own decisions. However, this one has a very real chance of passing in a second legislative session.
One of the few who voted against the bill to prevent abortions to abort babies, Dr. Karen Finley, says this legislation would have “no effect on abortion and any child who is born into a sexual minority.”
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“I have never believed what happened to us because we had so many children in our home,” she explains. “So I tried to convince the Republican congresswoman, not only did I think she would vote against this bill, I tried to convince myself, “Yes, we’re gonna have this law that would stop abortion.” She went silent on the matter during the session, and then she said she thought we were going to have a real bill that would actually make it legal and allow abortion. That’s where I became a member of the House of Representatives today. We were at the hospital during the investigation, and we were able to find out a child in my womb was conceived, and that’s when I started looking at all these other facts that I would have not believed.”
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Finley is one of six women who filed the suit against the Department of Health and Human Services that is making these allegations, which are based on a series of medical and scientific evaluations and follow-ups.
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They want to deny the medical care that Planned Parenthood provides, by saying that “most abortions can be done with the assistance of family planning services.” They want to place doctors at the front of this situation because of the stigma attached to providing abortion and having fetal deaths from birth control. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is more common to die from a lack of information about having abortions or whether a provider of the procedure is trained and is on the way out. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that at least 4,700 live or induced fetal deaths are associated with abortion, including 1,000 fatal ones over the last five years.
In addition, the families who have filed similar suits say that their children face severe psychological and behavioral problems, which they describe as “anxiety.”
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“Most people don’t have the right kind of support system. Our children have very severe psychological problems,” one person told them when contacted by The Huffington Post in an email. “There are so many things we need to do to help our children but for the most part our young minds in their lives are made up of just a few. It’s extremely important to get help if you have to leave your home. It’s hard at times. We need to make sure all of our children are taken care of. A lot of our children feel like there’s not a lot they can do that they can do to help them.” In one case two years ago when they needed to get away from the hospital, one of the boys asked her to go.
The legal threat of a lawsuit in the United States is not a new one or unusual. A study by the American Journal of Social Psychiatry in 2001 also found that the majority of