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Ask an expert: Does the media cause children to be violent?Question: Does violent media cause children to become violent?
Answer: Research about the relationship of media violence to violent behavior in children has been conducted by hundreds of researchers over the past 50 years. Most studies indicate that exposure to media violence is a significant contributing factor in a child’s violent behavior. Note that we’re saying it is one of several contributing factors. That’s different from saying that violent media content can cause violence in children. Violence in our society is a complex social problem. We can’t attribute a causal relationship to the media, nor to any other single factor. Researchers from Case Western Reserve and Kent State universities in Ohio are among the most recent group to study this question. They used an anonymous self-reporting questionnaire to survey 2,245 Ohio public school students in grades three through eight about violent behaviors. The results of the study were reported in the October 1999 issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The survey report on the AAP Web site (listed below) states, “The results indicated that a combination of demographics, (lack of) parental monitoring, television-viewing habits and exposure to violence accounted for 45 percent of students’ violent behaviors.” We need to acknowledge that many studies have shown that repeated exposure to violent images can lead to an increase of violent behavior in children, can desensitize them to violence, can develop undue fearfulness (what media literacy specialists call the “mean world syndrome”) and can increase their appetite for more violence. Many young people use media without any parental supervision and without the benefit of media education and the critical thinking skills it develops. As a result, some indulge in a steady diet of violent films, videos, television programming and electronic games. Books, magazines and music whose lyrics use inflammatory language and foster bigotry and hatred must also bear their share of the blame for contributing to violent behavior in youth. Computer and video games with graphic violence have been getting an increasing amount of attention because of the popularity of the most violent of these games. Each fall the National Institute on Media and the Family publishes an online rating of electronic games to give parents and relatives some guidance when purchasing e-games for holiday gift giving. Its Web site carries these annual ratings. Fran Trampiets teaches graduate courses in media education at the University of Dayton's School of Education. RELATED STORIES: Ask an expert: Defining media literacy RELATED SITES: American Academy of Pediatrics | ||||
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