Short Article on Media Violence and the Effects on a Child's Brain

http://www.webmd.com/parenting/news/20050610/media-violence-may-affect-childrens-minds

As the title prompts, this is a very practical article in discussing our research question. It is a short, easy to read, easy to understand write up of the effects media can have on the brain. I found this article before I started my initial research and it was the cornerstone for motivating such work. I hope you all enjoy the article!

Summaries of My Sources

Early Exposure to Media Violence and Later Child Adjustment: 

As the title implies this article deals with early aged children exposure to media, more specifically the pre-school years . It looks at how this exposure is detrimental to a child’s cognitive development. The exposure effects the child’s ability to have normative social interactions, and can stunt the emotional development of the child. All of which are factors that can lead to an increase in violent acts in the child. This results were reached but looking at the parent reporting their child’s average time spent watching television and compared with the child’s teacher anti-social symptoms based on several variables. This research will be crucial to determining whether or not there is an actual causal relationship between media exposure and violence in young children.

Media Violence Is There a Case for Causality?

This article is very useful to our work because of the different approach it takes to determining causality. As opposed to focusing on one study or a set of related studies to conclude causality, this article reviews the steps and logic behind numerous studies on related content. It explores content regulation and the pros and cons of such actions. This article is interesting to our research because it looks at the relationship between exposure to media violence and outward violent behavior from a solely objective standpoint. Having an article that educates us on how to interpret data sets and conclusion is very beneficial in keeping our conclusions modest. Without proper background on interpreting certain results and making conclusions on them, we run the risk of inappropriately making conclusions and faulting our research.

Understanding and Preventing Violence in Children and Adolescents:

This article takes on the term “violence” in all facets. The article admits that violence is impossible to avoid in today’s society and for a children this exposure has different effects. This article is different than the others in that it goes beyond looking at violent media as the only source of violence in a child’s life. It can come from many other facets from experiences on the playground, domestic violence at home and even walking down the street. Understanding that violence comes in many forms gives this article the most strength and relevance to our project. This artice will be useful because it will help us develop our perspective further so that we can understand the claims we are making and more importantly learn to distinguish certain effects of real life violence from violence in the media.

Media and Children What Needs to Happen Now?:

This article gains its strength from examining amount of time children spend with media, their access to such media and how these factors are reproduced into violent behavior. It briefly covers a survey of 365 physicians and their views on exposure to media (i.e. do they recommend to children spending less time with media). It claims that children are most vulnerable to violent exposure at a young age and once these behaviors have been learned they are very difficult to replace. The problem exposed by this article is that there should be more available resources to children who need help changing the learned behaviors. This article will be great in our research in bolstering our conclusion that exposure to media should be limited and restricted depending on the material.

New Violent Media, Uprising Trend in Children Violence

Two peers and I have begun a resaecrh project to explain the increase in violence among children. Our hypothesis is that newer forms or technology are making the content children are exposed to more realistic. This is turn makes the vioelnce seem more acceptable because it it is believed to be real life. Stay tuned for more conclusions on our hypothesis over the next few weeks as we further delve into our research!

Violence in Children's Media; Violence Among Children in Society

       My research question as somewhat prompted by the title of this blog is: The increasing technology in Children's media is making the violence seem more realistic to children, is this increase in technology leading to an increase in violence among children? This question is important to me because less then ten years down the road I will be a father myself, I want to be informed as to what modes of media are most harmful to child development and more importantly what types of images can lead to violent behaviors in my child. So far I have collected data from over 12 scholarly sources and my data collection has been going very well. By the end of this year I will have answered my hypothesis and reached a conclusion on the research.
      Attached is simply an image I thought would offer some kind of visual regarding violence among children. This image strikes me personally because growing up I was strictly instructed to never throw a punch and I will surely teach my child the same, however,  If something like this can happen on a playground out of our control the only way we can truly prevent this behavior is to monitor the content they are exposed to. The content that teaches children behaviors when we cannot ourselves.