The Media Violence - Aggression Controversy

From the events of Columbine 14 years ago to the tragic massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, every time a school shooting occurs, a controversial debate surrounding the media violence and their real-life effects begin to resurface in society. Much was made in the past about the fact that the Columbine shooters were avid fans of Marilyn Manson, whose song lyrics contain violent and explicit imagery, and even more so now, since rumor has broken that Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza was a heavy player of the violent Call of Duty video game series. However, to this day, the general consensus among members of society is that the link between media violence and aggression is not well known. The question still remains as to how much of a role should parents play in controlling their children’s exposure to violent media.

A recent article titled “Violence and Media: The Real Effects” explores many facets of this argument, citing numerous recent research publications. This article claims “90% of movies, 68% of video games, and 60% of television shows depict some sort of violence”. In addition, the authors of this article say that children about the age of 7 are able to fully distinguish between fantasy and reality, a distinction that allows slapstick violence to be funny, since that type of violence could never occur in real life.

One of the main points this article attempts to make is that there are many variables of past studies that researchers are not considering. For example, they claim that most studies focus on normal children, and not on those with preexisting mental conditions. Others claim that the long-lasting effects of video games are difficult to fully understand as longitudinal studies take time, and violent video games have not existed for enough time. Some critics go as far as to claim that this type of violence in the media may be beneficial as we have seen a decrease in violent crime over the last five years despite an increase in violent video game content.

However, Craig A. Anderson and Brad J. Bushman in their article “The Effects of Media Violence on Society” in Science claim that the causal link between media violence and aggression is larger in magnitude than the effects of calcium intake on bone mass or lead exposure on the IQ of children. They attribute the current continuing controversy to inaccurate reporting by the popular press, and claim that this situation is analogous to the debate surrounding cigarette smoking and its effect on cancer as one that persisted far too long after the general consensus around the scientific community was that smoking causes cancer. Through meta-analysis, laboratory experiments, field experiments, cross-sectional studies, and longitudinal studies, all have shown a similar-sized strong positive effect of violent video games and aggression.

They conclude their article by identifying broad ways to reduce this effect of media violence and aggression in our youth. First, it would be imperative to reduce children’s exposure to media violence. However, this is not the only way. Another significant way of reduction would be to change children’s attitudes towards media violence. Such responsibility falls not only on the shoulders of parents, but also on those of teachers, school administrators, and those in the media. The first step in correcting this problem would be to identify that there is one in the first place.

Anderson, C.A. & Bushman, B.J. (2002). The effects of media violence on society. Science, 295, 2377-2379. DOI: 10.1126/science.1070765.  

Miller, Kara (2013). Violence and Media: The Real Effects. Retrived from: http://wgbnews.org/post/violence-and-media-real-effects