Media Violence and Its Effects on Youth Behavior

Introduction: Media as a Behavioral Influence

There are many factors responsible for youth violence. Heredity predisposes some individuals to aggression and violence more than others; interpersonal dynamics within families and parenting styles can contribute to negative behaviors; and the developmental period of adolescence is characterized by psychological insecurity, poor decision-making, emotional instability, and the yearning for peer approval — sometimes for negative behavior. However, in contemporary society, the media also play an important role in influencing the behavior of young people.

Already in the earliest era of electronic media, it was readily apparent that the transmission of messages via public airwaves held tremendous potential for influencing human behavior. Advertisers relied heavily on radio commercials in the period between the two world wars; the Nazis demonstrated the power of media propaganda during the World War II period; and media advertising exploded into a very powerful industry in the United States in the post-war era after wartime technology trickled down to consumer products and made televisions affordable to the masses. By the 1950s, recording artists' careers could be established in a single television appearance, movie stars and sports figures began appearing routinely in product commercials, and public service announcements had to warn children not to emulate their superheroes on television — precisely because the medium of television is so powerful that it can alter the actual behavior of viewers.

In the modern era, that influence has only increased by virtue of advancements in all forms of media technology. Today, children and adolescents regularly spend many hours playing competitive video games with incredibly realistic imagery and contextual scenarios that depict violence and mayhem of the type restricted from theater viewing by children under 17. There is substantial empirical evidence to suggest that aggression and violence on television negatively influences even the youngest children who view it regularly, and that the violence and antisocial behavior routinely depicted in video games consumed by adolescents contributes to negative real-life consequences in that regard.

Media Violence and Childhood Behavior

There is no question that children and adolescents emulate the behaviors to which they are regularly exposed during their developmental period. That is generally a positive method by which the individual absorbs and learns the norms, values, and expectations of society. However, the tremendous susceptibility of young children to suggestion and to the influence of exposure to specific types of behavior is what makes entertainment media such a potential danger with respect to modeling negative behaviors. That is particularly true for young children, given their relative inability to distinguish the fictional nature of television from real life.

Empirical studies have linked exposure to aggression and violence depicted in children's television and other forms of entertainment media to measurable behavioral changes. More specifically, kindergarten-aged children exposed to comparatively violent imagery in the context of cartoons and other programming intended for their consumption exhibit increased levels of aggression in subsequent play when they are permitted to guide their own activities. That outcome should not be particularly surprising, because numerous prior studies established, more generally, that children copy behaviors modeled for them, especially by adults.

There are at least two different mechanisms by which exposure to aggressive and violent imagery in entertainment media produces these effects in children. In addition to the general concept of behavioral modeling — which applies both to media consumption and to viewing adult behavior more generally — there is also a specific issue of psychological desensitization that occurs in children as a function of regular exposure to violence in particular.

In experiments designed to measure the effect of exposure to violence, researchers documented that children who witness aggression or violence in adults, even in fictional representations such as those typically featured on television, in movies, and in video games, undergo changes in their perceptions about corresponding behaviors. They develop a higher threshold for their definitions of aggression and violence, as well as for the appropriateness of certain behaviors and the contexts in which those behaviors occur in the real world.

Conclusion

There is overwhelming empirical evidence that regular exposure to aggression and violence in media is associated with corresponding behaviors in both young children and adolescents, as well as in young adults. In young children, media violence operates through at least two separate mechanisms: social learning and psychological desensitization. Exposure to violence on television increases the incidence of aggression and violence in children's choice of games afterward. Both children and teenagers tend to change their perceptions about what types of social conduct are acceptable after watching scenarios in which negative behaviors are represented as enjoyable or beneficial to protagonists on screen. Teenagers who regularly consume violent imagery on screen exhibit higher instances of a wide variety of negative attitudes and behaviors compared with counterparts who do not regularly consume violent media imagery.