Does Media Violence actually cause people to Commit Violent Acts Essay

Does Media Violence actually cause people to Commit Violent Acts - Essay Example   Studies disclose that children watch roughly twenty eight hours of television a week (Tompkins). Adolescents and children in America are open to the elements of mounting levels of media violence, particularly in video games, movies, television and youth-oriented music. On average, a young individual would have watched 200,000 scenes of violence on television by the age of 18 (Huesmann, Moise-Titus and Podolski, 207). Many of the studies that claim positive results concerning a link between media violence and ensuing aggression, actually have negative or inconclusive results. Media violence researches frequently fail to report for other variables such as heredity traits, personality and introduction to family violence that may explain both the reason some people become violent and why they may decide to expose themselves to violent media. In more recent years, violence has become the most popular form of entertainment. Most fictional programs on television and scenes depicted in m ost games need this violence to develop a storyline that would be interesting and captivating to most viewers. The violence is far more graphic and disturbing than in the past (Tompkins, 52). Many argue that media violence is at least partly to blame for the school shootings in Littleton, Colorado, Taber, Alberta and Erfurt, Germany.    Proponents of the idea that violence depicted on both television and video games affects the behavior of children state that, contrary to other beliefs, these scenes teach a higher sense of the justification of the use of violence in different situations (Tompkins, 50). It teaches that violence is a correct avenue to solve differences, which is not an acceptable action within real life situations. The classic setting of using violence for a virtuous cause may interpret in daily life into a validation for using violence to even the score against supposed victimizers. Consequently, defenseless youth who have been maltreated may be tempted to use aggr essive means to resolve problems. The hero in most of these scenes also teaches them that violence has no consequences because he/she never gets in trouble for their actions. Most psychologists agree that experiences teach children during their early years and have a longstanding effect on their lives. Toddlers between the ages of eighteen to sixteen months are intelligent enough to comprehend the significance of the programs (Tompkins, 48) that they watch and respond in the same manner to both actual and acted violence since their link between dream and actuality is still not strong. Furthermore, toddlers between the ages of three and five years are engrossed by extremely dramatic scenes, which in today’s viewing, is mostly violence. Additionally, children who are in elementary schools believe that TV reflects real life and will become more active in displaying hostile conduct after watching violent scenes because they have been learning form a young age through watching and imitating what they see their through the violent acts of supposed movie heroes (Malamuth and Check, 436). Children who observe the aggressive shows, even hilarious cartoons, were more apt to hit their playmates, quarrel, refuse to comply with class rules, leave tasks