Violence In The Media

With recent technological advances, more and more children and teenagers have indulged in excessive use of media through television and video games. The Academy of Pediatrics says that “more than 1,000 scientific studies and reviews conclude that significant exposure to media and violence increases the risk of aggressive behavior in certain children, desensitizes them to violence, and makes them believe that the world is a ‘meaner and scarier’ place than it is” (Heffner). Violence in the media is affecting children both mentally and physically and is causing them to become desensitized to violence in real life situations. Exposure to lots of blood and gore in media and video games makes people less sensitive and more numb to the pain and …show more content…
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two shooters that caused the one of the most known mass shootings at a high school, are said to have played numerous hours of violent video games. The game that they played most was a first person shooter, sci-fi horror game named Doom. Their exposure to violence is said to be from the game because they both came from secure home environments with active parental influence. Another video game fanatic named Michael Carneal shot and killed three of his classmates in 1997. Michael Breen, the attorney in the case against Michael Carneal, stated in court that “Michael Carneal clipped off nine shots in a ten second period. Eight of those shots were hits. Three were head and neck shots and were kills. That is way behind the military standard for expert marksmanship. This was a kid who had never fired a pistol in his life, but because of his obsession with computer games he has turned himself into an expert marksman” (Heffner). A man who shot up a movie theatre in Colorado, killing 12 and injuring 58, told someone that during the shooting he felt like he was in a video game. The Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza, logged over 500 hours of playing the first person shooter game, Combat Arms, recording 83,496 kills with nearly 23,000 headshots. Lanza was a skinny socially awkward teenager who was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. In the game he was able to recreate himself as a stronger muscular soldier figure. He became obsessed with the game where he had to kill as many people as he could within a certain amount of time which included himself. The attraction of first person shooter games runs deeper than just entertainment. The reason why violence is in the heart of so many games is because people have a power fantasy. People like Lanza who are socially awkward and do not have any power over his peers obsess over violent games because the games put them into a position where they have the

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Media Violence