The Disadvantages of Media Violence

   

The Disadvantages of Media Violence 

    Dr. Stockdale presented her research findings on the consequences of media violence on the development of a brain, risk factors, and protective factors(personal communication, April 21, 2020). She began her discussion by explaining the bobo doll experiment by Albert Bandura, which showed that children can learn aggressive behavior by observing other aggressive people even after a short period of time. Dr Stockdale shared that media violence can increase aggression, cognition, and physical arousal in the short term. In regards to long term, media violence can change one’s personality, schemes, attitude, cause one to become more aggressive in social situations, lower empathy, and lower prosocial behavior. Dr Stockdale also conveyed that if a child is given screen time too early, language and cognitive development can be impaired. However, she clarified that if parents and infants use it together, there are less consequences. 

     This topic was interesting to me because although I have not played any video games, I have watched movies and television shows with themes of violence growing up. Dr. Stockdale’s research made me wonder if my personality and outlook on the world changed from viewing violent content as a child. The research findings are important to me because now I know to avoid watching violent movies with my younger cousins. I was curious about the other consequences of media violence, so I found an article on Science Daily about the subject called “Cross-cultural study strengthens link between media- violence, aggressive behavior.”

    In the article(Anderson et al., 2017), a professor from Iowa State University, Craig Anderson, studied the effects of media violence on behavior, and specifically tested if there were cultural differences. Researchers found that media violence was associated with aggressive behaviors in several countries around the world and that it led to a decrease in empathy. Anderson was unsure whether exposure to real violence increases aggression in a person. The researchers also tested the association between peer delinquency, peer victimization, gender, neighborhood crime, and abusive parenting with aggression. The findings showed that media violence was the second predictor after peer delinquency for aggressive behavior. All the results were from a survey that was completed by 2154 young adults in Australia, China, Croatia, Germany, Japan, Romania, and the United States. 

    Dr. Stockdale listed several negative effects of media violence such as decrease in empathy, more aggressive behaviors, and personality changes. The article went further and tested if the results were similar among people in multiple countries. The article also compared different risk factors for aggression. Like Dr. Stockdale, the author of the article even stated that media violence was correlated to lower empathy and more aggressive behaviors. Both sources suggested that avoiding video games, movies, books, and television shows that are violent in nature is the best decision in order to stay healthy mentally. It is perhaps better to watch a romantic-comedy instead of a murder documentary. 

References:

Iowa State University. (2017, April 11). Cross-cultural study strengthens link between media violence, aggressive behavior.ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170411085742.htm