Sociology

Media has different impacts on the behavioural patterns of children as they grow up. Though not new to the human lifestyles, violence in children has raised intensive concern of late following the advancement in technology. Such technology has increased childrens access to media that display violence. Various studies have been conducted by physicians and other children welfare groups concerning the relation of the media content and childrens behaviour, and their findings indicate that the media are largely to blame for the violence on the children (Martin  Julian, 1997). According to a 2005 Kaiser Family Foundation report, the U.S. teenagers between eight and eighteen years of age spend about seven hours daily for either the television, gaming devices or even computers, while devoting very little time to other healthier activities such as playing (Martin  Julian, 1997). A survey by Brown on the violent content on the media that these children interact with, indicates that about 61 of children programs aired have violence as the major theme with only a meager 4 lacking violence (cited in Buckingham, 1997). The survey further indicates that 42 of the violence is related to humor and 54 of these violent programs display lethal violence. An initiative by the American medical Association, American Academy of Child  Adolescent Psychiatry, American Psychological Association, American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians indicate that the exposure to violent actions in the media causes childrens subsequent violent behaviour and negative attitudes (Browne  Hamilton, 2005). Such impacts include aggressiveness, anger and arousal. The initiative further notes that all teenagers are affected, the younger ones being more prone and vulnerable to these impacts. The major issue revolving around media violence and children then is if children really are able to distinctly differentiate between reality and fantasy and if they can discern the purpose of applying violence from the violent media.

It is even more worrying to note that children younger than 5 years old are gaining access to such media, yet this is the age, at which children learn new behaviours through observation and imitation (Martin  Julian, 1997). Linder notes that just like the adult programs, children programs contain as much direct or indirect aggressiveness as the adult ones and this leads one to question the integrity of the producers who produce such media programs. Producers fail to consider the extent of aggressiveness in children programs while rating them. A video game like Grand Theft Auto has a high content of violence and young people known to consistently play the game have been identified to have high diastolic blood pressure which increases their temper and therefore making them aggressive, are uncooperative and have negative attitudes and are highly susceptible to indulgence in alcoholism and substance abuse (Burking ham, 1997). According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the most notable causes of young peoples deaths are the following trauma, suicide and homicide and those related to aggressiveness. Such deaths outnumber those occurring as result of chronic diseases such as cancer. Childrens exposure to violence reduces their sensitivity to violence, thus, they tend to engage themselves in violent activities without the slightest idea of what such behaviour entails, as far as the moral values are regarded. Psychologists argue that a childs behaviour will most likely be influenced by the type of environment the child grows in. This explains why there have been so many reports of teenage violence especially in the west. It is argued that children learn a behavior by repetitively doing something (Bushman  Huesmann, 2001). High numbers of young people specifically in the U.S. are introduced to performing acts of violence, such as in video games, and its likely that this is the behavior they will grow learning.  

Children encountering violence in their early ages tend to embrace violence at their later stages in life as they develop a notion that the world is mean and aggressive. They embrace aggressiveness so as to resist this perceived violence and protect themselves. The children may also develop an antisocial behaviour on the fear of being the victims of this perceived violence. Experts note that children who have grown in the midst of violence in the media will have the desire to encounter more violence through the media and in real life as they perceive this aggressiveness in the media as depicting bravery (Buckingham, 1997).In this respect, children identify with a certain violent character either in a television program, radio program, game or the print media as their hero. As they grow up, they want to imitate the behaviours of these stars without the knowledge of the aim of the violence used by the star in the respective content. These characters apply aggressiveness as a means of leveling conflicts and thus children adoring such stars grow being insensitive to conflict as they also seek to apply it to solve conflicts in the real life situation perceiving it to be an acceptable way of resolving issue. A Congressional Public Health Summit held in the U.S. in 2007 concluded that when a childs hero role model is violent, the impact of negative attitude to a child will likely be greater. Aggressive behavioural change has in the past been studied through a General Aggression Mode through which violent content in the media has been confirmed to increase a persons arousal, hostility and aggression. This mode concluded that the effect is even more depleting long-term exposure (Browne  Hamilton, 2005). There have been a number of real life incidences of violence by teenagers. In February 2003 for instance, Dustin Lynch claimed to have been inspired by Grand Theft Auto episodes when he was charged with a murder case in which he had shot and killed other young people. Most teenagers are socially influenced by events in violent media as they take the real world to be like the medias virtual world

Various efforts have been channeled to identify, how violent media impact children. However, though many people support the fact that media violence impacts negatively on children, they adopt varied mechanisms as to how the impact takes place and this is based on different lines of thought. Some believe that negative influence is as a result of psychological factors relating to the way people learn in that children adopt cognitive scripts that direct their behaviour by following the actions of their stars (Martin  Julian, 1997).

Based on this argument, its argued that children internalize scripts that depict violence as an acceptable and most applicable way of solving conflicts. Others note that the impact is due to the psychological effects occurring following the interaction with violent media and that the stimulated response to violence in media predisposes children to act violently to in the real situations.  Aggressiveness developed due to interaction with violent media could result to one loosing touch with the society and in some cases low self esteem and stereotyping by the community and these could in turn affect the persons psychology. Some people though disagree with the reports that media have negative influence on children arguing that media content does not influence a persons decisions and make one engage in violent actions. Effective ways of controlling media violence exist and which can be very helpful in promoting non-violent behavior in children and such include the use of V-chips, satellite control or cable on TV programming among other means (Martin  Julian, 1997). As the debate on the impact of violence in the media on the childrens behaviour rages, the role of parents and media producers has been identified as paramount in controlling the behaviours children learn by selecting the content that the children have access to through the media.