Media Violence: A poison in our society?

     In a debate that should have been over years ago, the role of violent media consumption is being reexamined in how it exacerbates aggressive behavior and diminishes affective, behavioral, and cognitive control. This is due to several factors, including duration of media exposure, increasing awareness of violent media's negative effects on children and adults alike, greater variety and accuracy of studies exploring this concept, and a renewed belief that public attention and policy-making is necessary to curtail media's detrimental effects on our normative social beliefs.

     Media use has increased sharply in the last decade, due to ever-advancing innovations in technology, that have created video-game console platforms, multi-media mobile devices that hold thousands of apps and also function as gaming platforms, and tablets and PCs that give consumers unrivaled access to content for any demographic a company could cater to. Because of this, on average, U.S. kids spend over seven hours every day using the various electronic media mentioned above, which is basically equivalent to a full school day of media use [1].

     Multiple different types of studies have similarly confirmed the effects of media violence on increasing personality traits like aggression, and decreasing prosocial behavior, inhibitory control, and sensitization to violence. For example, in 2009, an experimental study demonstrated how moviegoers were less likely to help an injured stranger after watching a violent movie as opposed to those who were equally like to help after watching a nonviolent movie [2]. Cross-sectional studies further confirm the same results, relating media violence to higher levels of aggression [3]. In a longitudinal study, a multi-wave approach showed that participants who played violent video games in the first wave showed increased aggression in future waves they participated in [4].

     It's important to note that there are multiple types of aggression that are being worsened through media violence exposure. This includes physical, verbal, relational, proactive, and reactive aggression. However, increasing aggression is not the only detriment that this media exposure has within the population. Brain imaging shows how consistent exposure to violence increases desensitization and lack of inhibitory control in response to future exposure to negative stimuli [5].

     So what can we do about this growing concern? Recently, most public policy has focused on restricting children's access to violent media. However, this poses many challenges, and it may be better to instead focus on improving media rating systems, increasing media literacy, and increasing cooperation between government and the media industry to improve media content.

     Just in the U.S., the different rating systems for television, video games, and movies can be quite confusing to parents who are trying to moderate children's media exposure, and may, in children, attract them to more violent content, due to enticing age-based classifications like PG-13, or NC-17. Many of these systems are controlled by media corporations themselves, and replacing them with a separate body, not motivated by profits, and led by an unbiased team of researchers and raters have been shown to be better understood by parents, and also more reliable and accurate. This is just one example of the different solutions available to us to utilize in order to  better educate the public and control proper access to violent content to appropriate demographics.

     Basic theories and many studies show the all media consumers are negatively affected in some way by interacting with violent content. What we know for certain is that media violence is an important factor shown to cause increased aggression, both temporarily and in the long-term. Additionally, media violence is one of the factors that can be quickest understood and dealt with the easiest by the general public. 

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References

1) Rideout, V. J., Foehr, U. G., & Roberts, D. F. (2010). Generation M2: Media in the lives of 8-18 year olds. Merlo Park CA: Henry J Kaiser Foundation.

2) Bushman, B. J., & Anderson, C. A. (2009). Comfortably numb: Desensitizing effects of violent media on helping others. Psychological Science, 20, 273-277.

3) DeLisi, M., Vaughn, M. G., Gentile, D. A., Anderson, C. A., & Shook, J. (2013).  Violent video games, delinquency, and youth violence: New evidence.Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 11, 132-142.

4) Gentile, D. G., Li, D., Khoo, A., Prot, S., & Anderson, C. A. (2014). Practice, Thinking, and Action: Mediators and Moderators of Long-term Violent Video Game Effects on Aggressive Behavior. JAMA Pediatrics

5) Swing., E. S., & Anderson, C.A. (2012). Video game playing and links to attention problems, proactive cognitive control, and visual attention. Symposium presentation at the 24^th Annual Convention of the Association for Psychological Science