By 18 years of age, the average young person will have viewed an estimated 200,000 acts of violence
on television alone.21 The National Television Violence study evaluated almost 10000 hours of broadcast programming from 1995 through 1997 and revealed that 61% of the programming portrayed interpersonal violence, much of it in an entertaining or glamorized manner.
22 The highest proportion of violence was found in children's shows.
... Prolonged exposure to such media portrayals results in increased acceptance of violence as an appropriate means of solving problems and achieving one's goals.
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9 American media, in particular, tend to
portray heroes using violence as a justified means of resolving conflict and prevailing over others.
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Television, movies, and music videos normalize carrying and using weapons and glamorize them as a source of personal power.22,
32 Children in grades 4 through 8 preferentially choose video games that award points for violence against others, and 7 of 10 children in grades 4 through 12 report playing M-rated (mature) games, with 78% of boys reporting owning M-rated games.
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34 Of 33 popular games, 21% feature violence against women.
35 Because children have high levels of exposure, media have greater access and time to shape young people's attitudes and actions than do parents or teachers, replacing them as educators, role models, and the primary sources of information about the world and how one behaves in it.
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In addition to modeling violent behavior, entertainment media inflate the prevalence of violence in the world, cultivating in viewers the “mean-world” syndrome, a perception of the world as a dangerous place.
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62 Fear of being the victim of violence is a strong motivation for some young people to carry a weapon, to be more aggressive, and to “get them before they get me.”
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...For some children, exposure to media violence can lead to anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder,
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63 sleep disturbances and nightmares,
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64 and/or social isolation.
65 Some have defended media violence as an outlet for vicariously releasing hostility in the safety of virtual reality. However, research that has tested this “catharsis hypothesis” revealed that after experiencing media violence, children and young adults behave
more aggressively, not less.
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68 Numerous studies have shown that an insidious and potent effect of media violence is to desensitize all of us to real-life violence.
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Children learn best by observing a behavior and then trying it. The consequences of their behavioral attempts influence whether they repeat the behavior. All violent media can teach specific violent behaviors, the circumstances when such behaviors seem appropriate and useful, and attitudes and beliefs about such behavior. In this way, behavioral scripts are learned and stored in memory.
47 Video games provide an ideal environment in which to learn violence and use many of the strategies that are most effective for learning.
81 They place the player in the role of the aggressor and reward him or her for successful violent behavior. Rather than merely observing only part of a violent interaction (such as occurs in television violence), video games allow the player to rehearse an entire behavioral script, from provocation, to choosing to respond violently, to resolution of the conflict.
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82 Children and adolescents want to play them repeatedly and for long periods of time to improve their scores and advance to higher levels. Repetition increases their effect. In addition, some youth demonstrate pathologic patterns of video-game play, similar to addictions, in which game play disrupts healthy functioning.
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83 Advances in the measurement of brain function have been applied to the study of media violence. Several studies have linked media-violence exposure to decreases in prefrontal cortex activity associated with executive control over impulsive behavior.84
Interpersonal violence, for victims and perpetrators, is now a more prevalent health risk than infectious disease, cancer, or congenital disorders for children, adolescents, and young adults. Homicide, suicide, and trauma are leading causes of mortality in the pediatric population. In 2004, unintentional injuries claimed 17741 lives, homicides claimed 5195 lives, and suicide claimed 4506 lives among 5- to 24-year-olds.
85 Of all deaths by homicide or suicide, fully half were gun related, making gun violence a leading killer of children and adolescents.
86 For young black males, homicide is the leading cause of death, accounting for nearly 45% of all deaths. The homicide rate for black males is 2.7 to 15.8 times higher than for other racial/ethnic groups at the same age.
87 Although violent crime rates have decreased by more than 50% between 1994 and 2004 for young people 12 to 24 years of age, they remain higher at this age than at any other age.
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Furthermore, the proportion of youth admitting to having committed various violent acts within the previous 12 months has remained steady or even increased somewhat in recent years.
88 In the 2007 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey,
18% of students in the 9th through 12th grades reported carrying a weapon to school in the month preceding the survey, and more than one third had been in a physical fight in the year before the survey.
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