Violence in Media, How Does it Affect Youth?
Adults will tend to keeps children and teens away from violent games and movies, but how it actually affects them is a debate.
Games and movies like Call of Duty, Deadpool and Suicide Squad are all examples of violent media. How much exposure an adolescent gets to this content really depends on their guardian's view on the subject. Some parents may not allow anything above PG-13 while others are good with any rating. What types of music are listened to could also be restricted, but usually as the person gets older these boundaries are removed over time.
Violence in video games especially, but not exclusively, has been blamed for many things, from bad behavior to mass shootings. The fear is that exposure to this content could turn normal children into violent people later on in life. Seeing the hero walk out of fights with minimal damage could possibly give youth the wrong idea. There is although some connection between 5-6% of kids who get in trouble and them playing violent games, but they are just correlations and other factors in that child's life could be responsible.
Some people argue that there isn’t a link between media violence and troublesome children; there are actually benefits to games like Call of Duty. One of these is the hand eye coordination that is trained as you play; another is multitasking, which is a big part of these games. Violent shows and movies should be used as examples on what not to do rather than showing adolescents what to do, but ultimately it's up to the child's guardian whether they are allowed to view violent content.
I have sent out a school wide anonymous survey to see students’ opinions on the matter.
One anonymous student said, “I think violent media does have an affect on us, especially those of us who have mental illness. Violence in video games, etc. may give us a perceived idea of what things are supposed to be like, and we may become calloused to the horrors of this world[sic].”
Another student chose a different approach: ”Violent tendencies from youth are formed from either terrible parenting, drug use, mental disabilities without proper treatment. Adults look for reasons their imperfect children are failing and doing these things when they should look to themselves for the answer[sic}.”
Everyone has their own opinion on this matter, but there just isn’t enough research on how violence in media affects adolescents. More should be done on this topic. Anything that has been done just shows correlations and no definitive proof that showing youth violence affects them in a bad way.
