Media Violence

ÐŽoUnited States is a violent nation. In 1992, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, there were almost two million murders, rapes, robberies, and assaults. A U.S. Department of Justice report revealed that the U.S. violent crime rate is many times higher than that of other industrialized counties: murder, rape, and robbery occur four to nine times more frequently in the United States than in European countries. This high rate of crime alarms the public. As Americans seek to understand the causes of their high rate of crime, one source often cited is violence in the media.ÐŽ± As people know, there is a lot of violence in media. ItЎЇs getting more graphic, sexual, and sadistic. It is going all over the country and world. People can find media violence in everywhere now. What should be done about media violence?

Violence has always played a role in entertainment. Even in history, people enjoyed violence. For example, the ancient Egyptians entertained themselves with plays re-enacting the murder of their god Osiris and the spectacles. And in Rome, they were given to lethal spectator sports as well. And now, people enjoy violence in everywhere. And now it is getting worse and worse. ÐŽoLaval University professors Guy Paquette and Jacques de Guise studied six major Canadian television networks over a seven-year period, examining films, situation comedies, dramatic series, and children's programming. The study found that between 1993 and 2001, incidents of physical violence increased by 378 percent. TV shows in 2001 averaged 40 acts of violence per hour.ÐŽ±

American children between 2 and 18 years of age spend an average of 6 hours and 32 minutes each day using media (television, commercial or self-recorded video, movies, video games, print, radio, recorded music, computer, and the Internet). This is more time than they spend on any other activity, with the exception of sleeping. When simultaneous use of multiple media is accounted for, that exposure increases to 8 hours a day. A large proportion of this media exposure includes acts of violence that are witnessed or "virtually perpetrated" by young people. It has been estimated that by age 18, the average young person will have viewed 200 000 acts of violence on television alone. ÐŽoThe National Television Violence study evaluated almost 10 000 hours of broadcast programming from 1995 through 1997 and found that 61 percent of the programming portrayed interpersonal violence, much of it in an entertaining or glamorized manner. The highest proportion of violence was found in children's shows. Of all animated feature films produced in the United States between 1937 and 1999, 100 percent portrayed violence, and the amount of violence with intent to injure has increased through the years. More than 80 percent of the violence portrayed in contemporary music videos is perpetrated by attractive protagonists against a disproportionate number of women and blacks.ÐŽ± American media, in particular, tend to portray heroes using violence as a justified means of resolving conflict and prevailing over others. Exposures to such media portrayals results in increased acceptance of violence. Television, movies, and music videos normalize carrying and using weapons and glamorize them as a source of personal power. Children in 4th grade through 8 preferentially choose video games that award points for violence against others. The popular music CD that led the sales charts and swept the Music Television (MTV) Video Music Awards in the year 2000 featured songs about rape and murder with graphic lyrics and sound effects. Because children have high levels of exposure, media have greater access and time to shape young people's attitudes and actions than do parents or teachers, replacing them as educators, role models, and the primary sources of information about the world and how one behaves in it.

Many parents find the entertainment industry's media ratings systems difficult to use; 68 percent of the parents of 10- to 17-year-olds do not use the television rating system at all, and only 10 percent check the ratings of computer or video games that their adolescents wish to rent or buy. Many parents find the ratings unreliably low. The ratings are determined by industry-sponsored ratings boards or the artists and producers themselves. They are age based, which assumes that all parents agree with the raters about what is appropriate content for their children of specific ages. But different ratings systems for each medium (television, movies, music, and video games) make the ratings confusing, because they have little similarity or relationship to one another.

Research has associated exposure to media violence with a variety of physical and mental health problems for children, including aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, fear, depression, nightmares, and sleep disturbances. ÐŽoMore than 3500 research studies have examined the association between media violence and violent behavior; all but 18 have shown a positive relationship. Consistent and strong associations between media exposure and increases in aggression have been found in population-based epidemiologic investigations of violence in American society, cross-cultural studies, experimental and "natural" laboratory research.ÐŽ± The strength of the correlation between media violence and aggressive behavior found on metaanalysis is greater than that of calcium intake and bone mass, lead ingestion and lower IQ, condom nonuse and sexually acquired human immunodeficiency virus infection, or environmental tobacco smoke and lung cancer. Children are influenced by media. Aggressive attitudes and behaviors are learned by imitating observed models. Research has shown that the strongest single correlate with violent behavior is previous exposure to violence. Because children younger than 8 years cannot discriminate between fantasy and reality, they are uniquely vulnerable to learning and adopting as reality the circumstances, attitudes, and behaviors portrayed by entertainment media. It is not violence itself but the context in which it is portrayed that can make the difference between learning about violence and learning to be violent.

ÐŽoIn addition to modeling violent behavior, entertainment media inflate the prevalence of violence