Everything that youngsters see or hear in the media early on in their lives affects them in some way. According to Oakes, “Numerous credible studies have documented at least short-term of various media forms on a wide variety of outcomes, including cognitive development, aggression, violence, sleep disturbances, and physical activity.” It is difficult to set a definitive effect media violence has on youngsters. There are multiple reason for this, but the main issue is that terms like “violence” and “aggression” are not easily categorized. To a child, almost any kind of conflict, such as arguments or disagreements in a television show, or losing in a video game can be classified as aggressive to a young child. In class we discussed conditioning. This basically means if one reward aggressive behavior it can lead to more aggressive behavior. Does the repetitive actions of killing and seeing blood in the media condition children to repeat actions of violence in the real world? Maybe. In that case, children can think it is tolerable to copy what heroes do in video games or movies to solve problems related to their everyday life. With the advent of mass media, including television and more recently, video and computer game, children are exposed to increasingly higher aggressive images. Gentile analyzed the content of the top …show more content…
Most children are spending time playing video games, watching television and browsing the internet. The result is that children today are completely immersed in media violence experiences from a very young age. Since exposure to media violence leads to aggressive behaviors, which includes risky behaviors such as violence against others and lack of remorse, with the right information about media violence such as video game violence, television violence, and internet violence, people will better understand the major effects violence can have on a young child’s