![]() ![]() Most researchers define media violence as visual portrayals of acts of physical aggression by one human or human-like character against another. Most researchers, however, have clear conceptions of what they mean by media violence and aggressive behavior. Similarly, among the public there may be little consensus on what constitutes aggressive and violent behavior. Rather our response should be to understand the dangers on the streets, to help our children understand and avoid the dangers, to avoid exaggerating the dangers which will destroy our credibility, and also to try to control exposure to the extent we can.ĭifferent people may have quite different things in mind when they think of media violence. The streets also provide wonderful experiences and help youth become the kinds of adults we desire. However, our response should not be to panic and keep our children “indoors” because the “streets” out there are dangerous. A ‘virtual’ bad street is easily available to most youth now. It is now not just kids in bad neighborhoods or with bad friends who are likely to be exposed to bad things when they go out on the street. ![]() These globe spanning electronic communication media have not really introduced new psychological threats to our children, but they have made it much harder to protect youth from the threats and have exposed many more of them to threats that only a few might have experienced before. Correspondingly, the recent increase in the use of mobile phones, text messaging, e-mail, and chat rooms by our youth have opened new venues for social interaction in which aggression can occur and youth can be victimized – new venues that break the old boundaries of family, neighborhood, and community that might have protected our youth to some extent in the past. ![]() Research evidence has accumulated over the past half-century that exposure to violence on television, movies, and most recently in video games increases the risk of violent behavior on the viewer’s part just as growing up in an environment filled with real violence increases the risk of violent behavior. Unfortunately, the consequences of one particular common element of the electronic mass media has a particularly detrimental effect on children’s well being. For better or worse the mass media are having an enormous impact on our children’s values, beliefs, and behaviors. In this new environment radio, television, movies, videos, video games, cell phones, and computer networks have assumed central roles in our children’s daily lives. One of the notable changes in our social environment in the 20 th and 21st centuries has been the saturation of our culture and daily lives by the mass media. ![]()
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