Media Violence

A lot of people have been blaming increasing media violence for the real - world violence, saying that violence in moves and video games make you do violent things you wouldn't normally do. A recent study published in “Journal of Communication” by a researcher at Stetson University, Christopher Ferguson proved these people wrong by showing that there is no link between media violence and societal violence at all.

The first study compared rates of the violence in popular movies from 1920-2005 and correlated homicides of the same year. Study found that movie violence and real - world violence were not correlated, except for a brief period during the mid - 20^th century, which may have started the “blame media for real-world violence” trend.

The second study searched for correlation of video game violence and youth violence rates during the same year. They indeed found the correlation between the two, but it was the opposite of the expectation, because the data showed the decline in youth violence rates with the increased violent video game consumption. Data, of course, can be just coincidental and violent video games might not be the reason for decreased youth violence, but it still proves they are not the cause for the violent youth behavior.

Previous studies, which tried to prove the direct correlation between media violence and real-world violence focused on the laboratory experiments instead of real - life exposures. They would put people in the room playing a violent video game or watching a violent movie while monitoring their behavior and sometimes people would become more violent, but they have not taken into account that this kind of violence can be not dangerous for the society. There is still no evidence that somewhat violent behavior caused by violent video games and movies has caused a problem for society.

I myself agree with this study and don’t believe that violent media is causing people to commit crimes. People around me, including myself, have been exposed to the violent media for a long time and no one I know has become a violent sociopath. Examples, which were given by people who believe in media and real - world violence correlation, are the exceptions, where the perpetrators are already suffering from violence issues and violent media has nothing to do with their actions. I don’t believe that the moving picture can affect your morals to the point, where you commit crimes, which you find unethical just for the fun of it.

The study by Christopher Ferguson has shown that media violence has no correlation with the real – world violence at all. So now when it has been proven that media violence is not the problem with today’s society, we should finally address more attention and resources to the real problems. If people have been investing more time and money into education, metal health and poverty, instead of researching how media inflicts our violent behavior, we would have achieved much more for today’s society.

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcom.12129/full]