The Effect Media has on Teen Violence
The Effect Media has on Teen Violence
"For the first time in human history, most of the stories about people, life, and values are told not by parents, schools, churches, or others in the community who have something to tell but by a group of distant conglomerates who have something to sell" (Osborn). This quote, which comes from "The Violence Formula: How to Analyze for Violence in TV, Movies, and Video," written by Barbara Osborn, is a frightening comment about the state of affairs of our culture. The conglomerate storytellers are less concerned with imparting positive cultural values than they are with making money. They know violence sells and they use it indiscriminately to make a profit. Among the consumers of this gratuitous violence are young children and teenagers who observe and absorb its content. Over time, the violent images depicted in music and film media have a detrimental effect on the thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors of our youth.
The negative messages kids receive via the media have a damaging affect on their psyche and can create serious societal problems. In truth "[t]he violence to which American children are exposed in the name of entertainment is affecting their values and behavior, according to a recent statement from four of the nation's top medical associations?(Davis). What are the examples of this fact? We have witnessed a plethora of shootings by high school students over the past few years. Just two weeks ago in Glendale, Arizona, a middle-school student held his teacher and several of his classmates hostage, using a gun as his weapon. More than likely, the portrayal of violent behavior in the media has given him the message that the way to resolve a conflict is through aggression. In fact "?the link between violent media and violent behavior is stronger than that between ingesting lead and having a lower IQ, than that between passive smoking and lung cancer, than that between failing to use condoms and getting HIV (Davis). What a powerful analogy! This comparison clearly illustrates that violent media can lead to an epidemic health problem.
Skeptics would like to believe that there is no validity to the correlation between media violence and youth violence. The truth is that the correlation has been documented dating back to 1960. In 1999, Senator Orrin Hatch, Utah, reported that "[m]ore than 1000 studies on the effects of television and film violence...