Media Violence
Media Violence In An Electronic Society
In Scharrer’s article “The behavioral, affective, and cognitive implications of media violence: Complex relationships between young people and texts” she explores the correlation between media violence and rising rates of violent acts. She makes the claim that media violence desensitizes younger children to either fear or recreate the violent acts they see in media. This correlation between violent images and violent acts is undeniable and clearly supported by various studies into the effects that violent images have on developing children. Children are very susceptible to the “monkey see-monkey do” complex, they are raised to walk, talk, and act like the adults they see. So when a child is shown large amounts of violence, for example “…13 to 22 acts of physical aggression per hour in Saturday Morning television” (Scharrer 25), they tend to feel less disturbed by it. This style of desensitization is prevalent in anything that is presented to children on a regular basis. The short-term effects of media violence are easy to indentify by simply asking kids how they feel about violence after seeing said images, but the long-term effects of media of violence are harder to study because the generation that has been exposed to it the most (the current generation) has not yet fully matured. Many of the children who media violence may potentially affect haven’t grown up enough to have the freedom to commit a violent act. The hardest part abut studying the effects of media violence is determining whether the images actually had a lasting impression on an individual. The same reaction could have been elicited by strong feelings of anger or repression. The argument that
media does cause violence uses the logic, that when someone is presented the “fight or flight” situation that they have been conditioned to fight because that is what their favorite movie star or video game character would do. This feeling is shared
In Scharrer’s article “The behavioral, affective, and cognitive implications of media violence: Complex relationships between young people and texts” she explores the correlation between media violence and rising rates of violent acts. She makes the claim that media violence desensitizes younger children to either fear or recreate the violent acts they see in media. This correlation between violent images and violent acts is undeniable and clearly supported by various studies into the effects that violent images have on developing children. Children are very susceptible to the “monkey see-monkey do” complex, they are raised to walk, talk, and act like the adults they see. So when a child is shown large amounts of violence, for example “…13 to 22 acts of physical aggression per hour in Saturday Morning television” (Scharrer 25), they tend to feel less disturbed by it. This style of desensitization is prevalent in anything that is presented to children on a regular basis. The short-term effects of media violence are easy to indentify by simply asking kids how they feel about violence after seeing said images, but the long-term effects of media of violence are harder to study because the generation that has been exposed to it the most (the current generation) has not yet fully matured. Many of the children who media violence may potentially affect haven’t grown up enough to have the freedom to commit a violent act. The hardest part abut studying the effects of media violence is determining whether the images actually had a lasting impression on an individual. The same reaction could have been elicited by strong feelings of anger or repression. The argument that
media does cause violence uses the logic, that when someone is presented the “fight or flight” situation that they have been conditioned to fight because that is what their favorite movie star or video game character would do. This feeling is shared
Cited: Bender, . NY Times n.d., n. pag. Web. 27 Oct. 2013. . Erica Schaeffer, .