Violence and the Media

American television carries by far, the most violent content in the world compared to any other country, (Gentile, 2003). Not only is violence something that American’s enjoy to watch on television but violence is also a form of entertainment around the world. Years ago, the Romans enjoyed watching the gladiators battle, today wrestling is enjoyed in the United States and many other countries and violence between animals such as cock fights that take place in Indonesia are just as popular, (Felson, 1996).

According to Gentile, estimates indicate that the average American child or teenager witnesses 10,000 murders, rapes or some type of assault per year; and by high school graduation that number increases to 200,000 throughout their life. These statistics seem to be a bit high because the amount of violence children and teens think they’re watching, and the amount of violence they are actually watching varies greatly.

This concept may be due to the ideas of violence on television being frequently ‘glamorized’ and frequently ‘sanitized.’ The idea of glamorizing violence on television refers to violent incidents that are perpetrated by the ‘good’ character in the conflict, who at the same time is portrayed as a role model for young viewers, (Gentile, 2003). The idea of sanitizing the violence seen on television refers to the idea that up to half of the violent incidents shown on television fails to show any physical harm or pain to the victim; or any long-term negative consequences to the victim or their family, (Gentile, 2003).

Because of these two concepts the violence on television seems to be filtered to a certain extent and to the eye, may not seem to be as bad as it really is. However, studies show that there is some sort of connection between violence in children and the media including, television, movies, the Internet and video games. According to mediafamily.org, children and teens ages 8-18 spend more time in front of the computer, television, and any type of game screens than any other activity in their lives besides sleeping. Children can be effected with the impact of media violence at any age but younger children are more prone to the effectiveness because they are more easily impressionable, they learn by observing and imitating, they cannot easily discern motives for violence and they have a harder time distinguishing between fantasy and reality, (mediafamily.org).

Up to date, there are several well-supported theories to link the connection between violence and the media. According to Gentile, the observational or social learning theory is one of the oldest and most popular theoretical explanations. The theories idea suggests that children learn new behaviors by their own experience or by observing others in their social environment, (Gentile, 2003). Simply meaning that the things children see on television are things that they are likely to imitate. This thought does not only refer to violence, even Hollywood seems to accept this theory. A well-known producer once stated:

I’d be lying if I said that people don’t imitate what they see on the screen. I would be a moron to say they don’t because look how dress style changes. We have people who want to look like Julia Roberts and Michelle Pfeiffer and Madonna. Of course we imitate. It would be impossible for me to think they would imitate our dress, our music, our look, but not imitate any of our violence or our other actions, (Gentile, 2003).

Recently this theory has been revised to the social cognitive theory. According to Gentile, “This theory acknowledges that differences in a child’s attention to and retention of a model’s behavior can help explain imitational responses.” This also allows the theory to extend further then just behavioral outcomes, and to include the learning of aggressive attitudes and normal beliefs from observing a model, (Gentile, 2003).

According to Felson, television can teach different skills and thoughts to their audiences directing the viewer’s attention to be doing things that they may have not even considered on their own. This idea can either start the thought of violence in children and teens or it could take their own ideas of violence and increase them with actions that they witness on television.

Some examples of this imitating of behavior includes two incidents, one in Boston where six men set fire to a woman after trying to force her to drench herself with fuel, soon to find out that this scene had been seen on television two nights before, (Felson, 1996). In another example, four teenagers raped a nine-year-old girl with a beer bottle which turned out to be a similar situation from the made-for-TV movie Born Innocent. These situations could be considered to be coincidental but they propose the odds that these horrible and strange behaviors on television