Craven 1 Chris Craven Estee Beck Eng 102 21 May 2011 Media Violence and the Effect it is Having

On Todays Youth As time has passed, and a new generation of parenting has come to the forefront, todays children are becoming more learned in foul language and behaviors at a younger age. Fifteen years ago to say a curse word in kindergarten was a one-way street to detention and the fear of God was imparted on the youngster; literally, the fear of God. Now however, when a five-year-old child says a curse word, the mass would find it funny. If the instance, by chance, gets recorded, it may even hit a million or more views on Youtube. These facts lead me to my question; is it true that the new generation of pop media is the key factor in why, slowly but surely, more and more children use foul language and demonstrate poor moral character? The truth behind this new phenomenon should be taken seriously and deserves discovery. Although it may seem miniscule now, the youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow. In order for this thesis to have any sustenance at all, it was first necessary to find out whether or not adolescents took what was seen on television, played on video games, or heard in music and applied such to every day life situations. In my journey through EBSCOhost, I first came across Gender, Race and Morality in the Virtual World and Its Relationship to Morality in the Real World. This article, from the Springer Science + Business Media journal described the levels of moral development, and then went on to describe a large, three year study on how children differentiate moral behavior from the

Craven 2 virtual world to the real word. In the study, there was proof that suggested a positive correlation between morally questionable behaviors, and children performing such behaviors in the real world (Jackson 867). The article continues on saying, certain virtual behaviors are unacceptable and in fact may be psychologically harmful (e.g., video game violence) (Jackson 867). On the opposite end of the spectrum the article does point out that the use of virtual media can improve hand-eye coordination. Now that I had thoroughly sorted through, one of many, studies that showed positive results for children that essentially played monkey-see, monkey-do with mass media, I needed to find out if adolescents legitimately spent a significant amount of time viewing, listening to, and or playing with violent or crude media. These questions lead me to Exposure of US Adolescents to Extremely Violent Movies, an article by authors from Marshall University School of Medicine, in the journal, PEDIATRICS. In this study 6,522 US adolescents, from the ages 10-14, were phone interviewed on whether or not the most popular scary movies had been seen (Worth). I was awe-struck to find that the most popular R rated movie, Scary Movie, had been seen by 48% of Americas youth. Marshall authors cite many other researchers and studies that have proof of violent media having a negative effect on the mentality and morality of youngsters. According to the article, the key problem lies in the fact that parents are not educated on the fact that violent media can be harmful to children. The solution presented is to have Pediatricians be more informative to parents. After reading multiple articles on how mass media negatively affected children, I thought it was only fair to give mass media a chance, so I went searching for research on positive effects of media on youth. This being a less researched area, I found it a little

Craven 3 more difficult to find articles relating to the topic, however I eventually found myself upon Uncommonly Good: Exploring How Mass Media May Be a Positive Influence on Young Womens Sexual Health and Development from New Directions For Children and Adolescent Development. Although this article is primarily written for an audience that was strictly looking at female adolescent behaviors, the information is easily applicable to both genders. There are many benefits from mass media listed, such as, sharing information on sexual health issues, the provision of many different types of role models so that any child can relate, and different ways that media provides outlets for self expression. I found the information in this article interesting, but not quite as helpful as my previous sources, mainly because the information given in this article seemed to be less researched and more speculative (Ward). The article from New Directions For Children and Adolescent Development, though less useful, spun me on to another idea, are there good role models in current pop media? Resulting from this question I found Celebrity Role Models, from the website www.commonsensemedia.org/celevrity-role-models. Described is the fact that children will have celebrity role models; it is simply up to the parents to make sure that the celebrity is a good role model. Even what some would call a bad role model can produce good. For instance when a celebrity gets into trouble make sure the child sees the consequences for the action and make an example out of the celbrity. Concluding from my research thus far, it is safe to assert that children mimic the behaviors that they witness from media sources like video games, television, and music. Also, multiple studies prove that it is a common act for young adolescents to participate in interaction with inappropriate media for the age group. Although there were a few

Craven 4 beneficial factors stemming from pop media, the negative factors were far outnumbering. Before our final project, there are very specific subject matters I want, but yet have not addressed. Namely, whether or not young parenting also has an effect on the morality of children of this generation. This particular question could pose a very large influence on my main thesis question, therefore I plan to delve deeper into the subject matter.

Craven 5 Works Cited Jackson, Linda A., Yong Zhao, Edward A. Whitt, Hiram E. Fitzgerald, and Alexander Von Eye. "Gender, Race and Morality in the Virtual World and Its Relationship to Morality in the Real World." Sex Roles 60.14 Feb. (2009): 859-69. EBSCOhost. Web. 18 May 2011. Parent Advice Celebrity Role Models. Common Sense Media. Ed. Liz Perie. The Anschutz Foundation, 2011. Web. 23 May 2011. Path: Commonsensemedia.org;parent advice; celebrity role models. Ward, Monique L., Kyla M. Day, and Marina Epstein. "Uncommonly Good: Exploring How Mass Media May Be a Positive Influence on Young Women's Sexual Health and Development." New Directions For Children and Adolescent Development 1.1121 June (2006): 57-70. EBSCOhost. Web. 18 May 2011. Worth, Keilah A., Jennifer G. Chambers, Daniel H. Nassau, Balvinde K. Rakhra, and James D. Sargeant. "Exposure of US Adolescents to Extremely Violent Movies." PEDIATRICS 122.21 Aug. (2009): 306-12. EBSCOhost. Web. 18 May 2011.