Persausive essay on Violent Media and Kids
Uploaded by tle7 on Jun 19, 2012
Are Children in Danger?
Violent media is one of the biggest and most dangerous issues among children in the United States. Generally, violent media are defined as visual characters with intentions to harm others. Commonly, we can find these violent characters in all kinds of violent movies, television shows, video games, and PC games. After years of researching, psychologists, socialists, and doctors have proven that excessive exposure to media violence has been affecting children in many bad ways. In other words, children who have excessive exposure to media violence are more likely to be negatively affected in terms of mental illnesses, social issues, and physical health. However, some people might not think that violent is dangerous to children because they do not completely understand how violent media can affect their kids. In my opinion, the U.S government should illegalize violent media for kids of ages under 17 in order to protect kids from violent exposure.
First of all, we should know about how media violence is affecting kids in terms of mental illnesses. Craig A. Anderson and Brad J. Bushman wrote “Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggressive Behavior, Aggressive Cognition, Aggressive Affect, Physiological Arousal, and Prosocial Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Scientific Literature,” an article from the Psychological Science journal published by Iowa State University that addresses the aggressive effects of violent media on kids. According to the article, kids between the ages of eight and 18 tend to spend over 40 hours on different types of media; school and homework assignments are not included. Unfortunately, the majority of them are more likely to spend almost 40 hours on violent video and PC games. Furthermore, Anderson and Bushman introduce us to the effects by raising a question: “Why does exposure to violent media increase aggression and violence?”(355). In their explanation, they use some of the early human psychological models of aggression. That is, the concept of aggression is a process of learning, activation, and application of aggressive actions stored in memory. Basically, what they mean is kids tend to observe and learn to do new things. Theoretically speaking, kids who have excessive exposure to violent media are more likely to become violent, aggressive, and abusive adults. As they stated, “Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine High School students who murdered 13 people and wounded 23 in Littleton, before killing themselves, enjoyed playing the bloody video game Doom”(353). Anderson...