Violence, Media & Society Investgation Report

November 8th 2010 [Neff; Block A; psych]

I do support the idea that violence in the media causes teen violence in society to increase. Because of our society with its many technology allows teens and children to access M rated video games and TV shows. With the access to these sources with the exposures to these violent games and shows, , over a period of time teens, would become more accepting of such violent acts. As new studies, done by American researchers, also claim that watching such shows do causes teens to act more violently. The impact on younger children who are exposed to such violent shows are great. For example, a little boy who is at the age of four watches about four hours of TV on average per day, and 1023 hours on average per year. Within those four hours, its most likely there are acts of violence with in it, such as if the boy was watching a movie like “Power Rangers” they would believe that violence is 'okay' and claim they are only being a 'Power Ranger' believing violence is an efficient way of problem solving. The Kaiser Family Foundation did a study which showed that around 50% of American parents reported that their child or children imitated characters they saw on TV.

Power Rangers is a show targeting children, but with in it there are acts of violence, much like many other superhero TV shows and Video games.

Statistics show that 51% of children ages between 8-16 have their own TV in their rooms, and 81% of children ages between 2-7 often spend time watching television unsupervised. Without the supervision, children get influenced by the possible violent and aggressive acts they see on TV. Stated in the Senate Judiciary Committee Staff Report, 2000, television influence alone is responsible for 10 % of youth violence. Some researchers believe when we are exposed to violent material in the media our heart rate increases and our blood pressure also increases which stimulates our aggression thinking or behavior. There were experiments and surveys were done upon how much influence media has on violent acts in society, which resulted in a positive correlation between violence and violent TV shows.

This graph shows that with the massive amount of video games sold, youth violence has gone down since 1996. That may be true, but these youth violent crimes are serious offence that are being recorded and not minor acts of aggression or violence. With the crime safety we have nowadays acts of violence are on a possible less several form. Thus they are not being recorded. Researchers have conducted surveys and noticed that teens who enjoys or addicted in playing violent video games score high on their aggression level test.

Though the 'increase' rate in violence are minor violent acts, I believe that media does play a large part in influencing teens to commit violent acts in society.