Media violence causes aggression in children?

Question

What are your views? Please elaborate. And what are the solutions to these problems?

Answer 1

It is not a simple cause and effect relationship, as children are not machines and do not response automatically to any stimulus.

Children will be influenced by unrealistic media content (aggression or anything else) only if they are not aware that it is unrealistic.

Children whose experience of reality has enabled them to tell the difference between fact and fanasy can do so nearly as well as adults. They do not attempt to copy behaviour which they can realise will not work (e.g. children who have played up trees, climbing frames, etc and fallen down a few times know perfectly well that they cannot fly like Superman).

The problem arises when children cannot discriminate between reality and fantasy, and cannot recognise strategies which, although they work in fiction, are not suitable for real life. The main causes of this are children lacking a wide bredth of general experience, and children being exposed to media which content which is beyond their comprehension.

With aggression it is usually the former, as most young children are quite capable of grasping the basics of aggressive behaviour.

Answer 2

I think that "cause" is a strong word here.  Does it contribute?  Sure, but we're surrounded by all sorts of things that can influence our behaviour.

If a kid brings a gun to school to fight back against teasing and bullying, is it really all that important that he happens to own an Xbox or listens to heavy metal or rap (all of which have been blamed in such cases)?

What are the solutions?  I think good parenting has a lot to do with it.  Children need to learn coping skills so they don't automatically lash out when they're stressed.

Answer 3

Perhaps in weak minded children.

Our boys watched the news last night where some British girls made a bomb and blew up a house, killing a man inside, because they were arguing over a boy.

All my kids had to say was how retarded those girls are.

Solution: Fix the problem, not the blame. Don't blame the media, television, video games, whatever it may be. because long before any of this Romans, Mongols, and n**i's were annihilating people and what was the problem then?

People are innately violent.

Answer 4

i don't think children spend that much time watching the news

Answer 5

well in order for people to consume a product there must be a demand for it. The whole idea that video games are corrupting our youth is founded on the premise that we are non-voilent. This is nonsense humans are fascinated by voilence. We only need to look at the news to see this not only does it show the history of voilence we have but highlight the fact that we are fascinated with voilence in news reports.

Voilence is much more to do with underlying social problems such as machoism/masculism, social ineqaulity and ethnic and political polaristion. In fact its hard to find a case of voilence barring mental disorder where one of these hasnt been a factor. Of course children might always wish to consume voilence, and these games might pave the way for voilence, but the real issue is the identity, emotionally and ideologically motivated clashes which lead to voilence.

Answer 6

I answered question (maybe in another form) recently.

Some years back, it was estimated that by the time the average American male reaches his 16th birthday, he has already witnessed some 16,000 deaths ~ from watching TV and film (including cartoons).

Deaths will invariable be violent and will predominantly involve gunfire, but there will be stabbings, poisonings, garroting, hangings and people hitting each other with their fists and heavy blunt objects.

That ought to be a lot of blood, a lot of bruises and broken bones, and a h**l of a lot of hurt, pain and agony.  However, from my observations, the reality of pain and agony are like second~hand or passive smoking, the effects are cumulative and are NOT experienced for what they actually are ~ as in The End Result.

Being punched 'hurts', being really punched ''REALLY HURTS'', but if you only see this in film form, you are not actually going to appreciate the effects ...just as cartoon mice beating the cartoon cat with heavy objects ~ and the cat lives to fight another cartoon another day..........

Children are desensitized to the effects, they are anethatised the realities of it all and know no different from what they have been fed.  Having been killed in one show, they may well see the actor in another show.

I can recall reading a father who reported his children watching a piece of film on the day President Kennedy was assasinated, and the children did not relate this even to real life and referred to it s 'a show' which was being re-run.

I'm inclined to remember that addage of, 'as you sow, so shall you reap the rewards (or not).'

Sash.