Violence in the Media

Violence in the Media

Violence has been a part of society ever since the days of the caves men, but only recently has television lifted its ban on the graphic depiction of violence. American children and adolescents are being exposed to increasing amounts of media violence, especially in television, movies, video games, and youth-oriented music. Video game violence, children's cartoons, and music lyrics have become increasingly graphic. In movies, action films depict vivid precise murders, rapes, and assaults; with each sequel, the number of deaths increases dramatically. Although media violence is not the only cause of violence in American society, it is the single most easily remediable contributing factor. It is these social networks that present the linkages between individual’s socialization and their actions. Violence in the media can be seen through a sociological perspective, which is the cultural transmission theory. It states that deviance is transmitted through socialization. Since the media is a major agent in socialization deviance could therefore be a result of the violence on today’s screen.

Media is extremely important as an agent in adolescent socialization because it is this stage that prepares adolescents for roles they will have as adults. It can also be detrimental in previous stages because a 6-month-old infant spends an hour and a half in

front of the TV per day. Violence plays an enormous role in influencing people’s cultural deviance, which is transmitted through socialization also. Through cultural deviance, by watching more violent television one can see that aggressive tendencies along with other misdemeanors will increase. This is all because it was exposed at a time when socialization was most vulnerable.

There are many Psychological concepts that contribute to people’s deviance such as their personality, containment, and also through learning, which is observation of others. Television violence influences behavior through observational learning, by reducing social constraints, and by arousing aggressive tendencies. External social control is the attempt of others to control one’s behavior, however, it may not be just control but also influence. Although the viewer may not blindly mimic violent acts portrayed on television, although it is all possible, many factors can contribute to what dictates a viewers actions. One method by which the media may promote violence is through imitation. Imitation includes more than simply applying a crime technique the criminal learned by watching television. Fictional treatments of crime can inspire and empower potential criminals.

Every hour there are 9.7 acts of violence on T.V. and another 21.3 alone are cartoons. As children watching the competition the coyote had with the roadrunner from Looney Tunes, which always resulted in a violent attempt from the coyote to stop the roadrunner,