Effects Of Violence In The Media On Adolescents

Words: 783
Pages: 4

Effects of Violence in the Media on Adolescents

The effects of violence in the media on adolescents is similar to that of children who are of pre-school and school age. However, adolescence is a little different as these individuals are being influenced by more things in the media, such as alcohol, body image, drugs, music, and sex. “High risk behaviors” come into play during adolescence. Klien, Brown, Childers, Oliveri, Porter, and Dykers (1993) looked at data that was gathered from in-home surveys of 2,760 randomly selected 14-16 year old adolescents in 10 urban regions. It was found that participation in eight possible risky behaviors (sexual intercourse, drinking, smoking cigarettes and marijuana, cheating, stealing, cutting class, and driving a car without permission) increased among adolescents who listened to radio and watched music videos and movies on television that featured some sort of violence, regardless of race, gender, or parental education level.
…show more content…
The more TV they watch, the more they anticipate their own lives to coincide to the rules and behavior they see modeled on the TV screen. This is important because during adolescence children are able to do more things on their “own”, such as drive, attend parties, and other social events where parental guidance is absent and may then engage in “high risk behaviors”. This is a major dividing point between adolescents and younger children because pre-school and school age children will have parental guidance around more often than not, it would be a little difficult for them to explore in such ways. Also, adolescents are more cognitively advanced, and are better able to understand things in the media than younger