Bad media making bad kids
Parents and Guardians tend to keep children and teens away from violent games and movies out of fear that they will become violent or even homicidal adults; however, how much (if any) actually affects them is a debate.
Games and movies like Call of Duty, Deadpool, and Suicide Squad are all examples of violent media. Violence in video games especially, but not exclusively, has been blamed for many things, from bad behavior to mass shootings. Some people argue that there isn’t a link between media violence and troublesome children. However, seeing the hero walk out of fights with minimal damage could possibly give youth the wrong idea. The fear is that exposure to this content could turn normal children into violent people later on in life.
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 child gets older these boundaries are removed over time. 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, such as bullying or abuse from family at home.
Some research has shown that there might be a connection between.... In a policy statement by the American Psychological Association (APA), scientists said, “The link between violent video game exposure and aggressive behavior is one of the most studied and best established. Since the earlier meta-analyses, this link continues to be a reliable finding and shows good multi-method consistency across various representations of both violent video game exposure and aggressive behavior (e.g., Moller & Krahe, 2009; Saleem, Anderson, & Gentile, 2012)”. This means that similar results have been shown in multiple studies but exact statistics were not stated.
In a Psychology Today article called “The Truth About Violent Video Games and Kids, Part 1,” Eileen Kennedy-Moore who is a clinician said, “To the extent that violent video games affect children’s moods, arousal, or ways of thinking about other people—and there’s plenty of evidence that they do—they could grease the skids towards real-life aggression, particularly in kids who aren’t so good at reining in aggressive impulses”, explaining there are effects but it may not affect all children in real life.
Studies were done by Dorothy Singer from the Yale Child Study Center. The studies looked at how violent TV affected children and the results were that, with healthy children, it only affected them slightly by increasing minor acts of violence. In troubled kids, it increased more violent acts.
As a solution, parents should monitor their kids’ behavior and, if they tend to repeat violent actions they have seen in media, take action and restrict the violence they see. There is no way to completely remove violent media of all forms since it is virtually everywhere but cutting down on violent games, shows, and movies could help. Not all children are susceptible to violence. So, in most cases, the violent media they see won’t affect them.
