Media violence ranges from cartoon slapstick to graphic gore and it’s omnipresent in our kids’ entertainment. If you’ve played a T- or M- rated video game lately, or watched a copy show, if you’ve seen an action movie or checked in on one of the many celebrity or sports star smackdowns, you’ve seen some of what our kids play on video games, or see on TV, in movies, online, or in music videos. Violent and aggressive behavior shows up everywhere. And it’s not simply passive; as video games take center stage, they allow players to maim, kill, and create all kinds of anti-social havoc. In fact, that’s how games are won. Studies show that aggressive video gaming affects kids—so much so that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) concluded that “ … playing violent videogames leads to adolescent violence like smoking leads to lung cancer.”
Why You Should Care
Because the studies don’t lie. Lots of violence affects kids’ behavior. Period. When kids marinate in media steeped in acts of aggression, it can increase antisocial activity and bullying and decrease empathy for victims of violence. The more aggressive behavior kids see, the more it becomes an acceptable way to settle conflicts. Movies with scary images, intense peril, loud noises, and, above all, blood and gore, create all sorts of disturbances, including increased anxiety, sleep disruption, and wicked nightmares. And those first-person-shooter video games? The intimacy of the mayhem and murder pack such a huge emotional punch that they alter brain chemistry.
Some Facts You Should Know
- A 2007 study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health concluded: “Media violence increases the reisk significantly that the viewer or game player will be have more violently in both the short and long run.”
- Children in the U.S. spend between 3 and 4 hours a day viewing TV and 60 percent of programs contain some violence and 40 percent contain heavy violence
- Video games are now present in 83 percent of homes with children. Eight to ten year olds play an average of sixty-five minutes a day. Most games are violent; 94 percent of T rated games contain violence.
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