Does media violence lead to real violence, and do video games impair academic performance?

November 11, 2008

This article by Caleb Crain, raises the question, if exposure to violence on TV and video games leads to aggressive behaviour in the real world, also if it does influence their academic performance. This article mentions experiments that were done in the 1960s by Albert Bandura, a well known Psychologist, showing that children tend to mimic violent behaviour they have just seen on screen. This reflects to what I mentioned in my previous posts, that the connection between the behaviour and acts, and the violence on what the children are exposed to, are rather difficult to research, and therefore hard to be scientifically proven, but we can see that children are not aware of the content and the amount of exposure, which then leads to mimicking what they saw on TV or video games.

"Clear evidence that television violence can cause aggressive behaviour." the American Psychological Association.

“Violence on television does lead to aggressive behaviour.” A panel commissioned by the Surgeon General to survey existing research.

This article also mentions the “mean world syndrome” where the violence, can cause children to believe that the world is mean and cruel. Also it mentions a boy that has been exposed to violence at a young age and at the age of 18 was involved in violent crime.

This Article is worth a read, because it talks about many researches that have been done in this field, to prove the connection to violent behaviour and media violence. As we can see there are plenty of examples concerning researches, therefore we can see what a status media violence has become in today’s society, meaning that is has caught our and researchers attention, that violent media exposure on children is a problem.

Find Article on:
http://umichpress.typepad.com/university_of_michigan_pr/2008/11/does-media-violence-lead-to-real-violence-and-do-video-games-impair-academic-performance.html



Crain,Caleb.(2008,November 11).Does media violence lead to real violence, and do video games impair academic performance? .Retrieved April 20,2010, from The University of Michigan Press: http://umichpress.typepad.com/university_of_michigan_pr/2008/11/does-media-violence-lead-to-real-violence-and-do-video-games-impair-academic-performance.html

Flickr.(2006,Dezember 7).Media violence [Image].Retrieved from http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/2006/12/07/