Media Violence

Machine gun fire, explosions, and screams for help are only a few of the sounds that can be heard emanating from a child’s bedroom today, while his parents listen nervously just outside his door. Horrified, these parents shake their heads ruefully, wondering at the power of entertainment available for kids nowadays. Sometimes they even argue whether it is right for their child to have access to this sort of violence: the kind found in most video games, television shows, and movies all over the world. But honestly, does it make a difference in the child’s development as a productive member of society, and if so, can a parent really do anything about it? These are the questions that researchers of the subject hope to answer conclusively

In order to understand how media violence has an effect on children, different variables must first be examined. To begin with, children of various ages understand what they are watching very differently. Most of it depends on the length of their attention spans, the way they go about processing their information, the amount of mental effort that they put in, and their own life experiences. These stages are broken up into five parts.

The first part is the effects on infants. Infants or children up to 18 months old can “Pay attention to an operating television set for short periods of time, but the attention demands a great effort and infants are more interested in their own activities.”1 Even when it seems that they are focusing on the television, infants will usually not be able to