Introduction: The media, particularly the TV, cinema, and video games are powerful tools for transferring information. These modern communication technologies, which we got very recently, can be used effectively to teach, inspire, and influence people. They are so recent in human history, we still do not fully understand the potential impact they could have on our society and lives. Yet, these powerful tools have been almost completely kept in the hands of commercial interests without much social oversight in the form of effective regulation.
We also do not know how we could incorporate the views of all interested groups in managing these powerful technologies. No wonder, there is increasingly overwhelming scientific evidence that the powerful media is influencing the attitudes and behavior of our children, and the youth. In particular, the violence and sex shown in the media is having a deleterious impact healthy psychological development of children and youth.
The purpose of this short review is to generate a debate among ?Mouthshut Members? on this important issue facing us.
Typically the entertainment industry argues that: (i) there is no scientific evidence to prove that violence in media is harmful, and (ii) the young are intelligent enough to know that television, movies, and video games are simply fantasy and not reality. Unfortunately their arguments are completely wrong on both counts.
<THE b Evidence:<>In his testimony to the US Senate in September 2000, Dr. Donald E. Cook, M.D., FAAP, President of the American Academy of Pediatrics summarized the serious situation of negative influence of the media on the attitudes towards violence. His testimony has to be taken seriously because he cannot afford give false evidence to the Senate considering whatever he says would be closely monitored and strongly contested by the powerful American media. In his Testimony Dr. Cook stated the following.
Out of the 3, 500 scientific studies carried out around the world on the correlation between exposure to media violence and violent behavior, 3, 482 of them found an association between media exposure and violent behavior.
Key finding of these studies are: (i) among other factors, exposure of violence in media was found to be one of the factors in about half of 10, 000 murders committed in the US in the year previous to the testimony; (ii) interactive media (such as violent video games) has even stronger influence on violent behavior in the form of aggressive thoughts, and make children emotionally insensitive to violence, (iii) exposure to violence at a young age make children believe that the world is a violent place and encourage them to assume violent behavior is an acceptable value, (iv) contrary to the beliefs (often propagated by the entertainment industry) that exposure to violence leads to reduction in violence due to the explicit release of hostility, studies found that it actually increased overt violence because of lowered inhibitions promoted by exposure to media violence; and (v) more importantly the strength of association between exposure to media violence and violent behavior is stronger than the following correlations: (a) non-use of condom and the exposure to sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS, (b) exposure to lead and lowered IQ, (c) exposure to passive smoking and lung cancer, and (d) calcium intake and bone mass development. These are very disturbing findings and have to be taken serious note of.
Causality: According to neuroscientists, prolonged exposure to stimuli and environment has a significant bearing on the development of brain. Summarizing the research in the field, a reputed scientist Jane M. Healy, Ph.D states that (I quote) ? ? repeated exposure to any stimulus in a child’s environment may forcibly impact mental and emotional growth, either by setting up particular circuitry (’’habits of mind’’) or by depriving the brain of other experiences. While appropriate stimuli ? close interaction with loving caregivers; an enriched, interactive, human language environment; engrossing hands-on play opportunities; and age-appropriate academic stimulation ? enhance the brain’s development, environments that encourage intellectual passivity and maladaptive behavior (e.g., impulsivity, violence), or deprive the brain of important chances to participate actively in social relationships, creative play, reflection and complex problem-solving may have deleterious and irrevocable consequences.? Further, according to Dr. Healy: (i) high levels of TV exposure could impair academic performance, (ii) violence, attention grabbing techniques often used in children?s programs, and excess sexual content engage the brain’s attention involuntarily and could deprive the child?s capacity to use its brain independently, and (iii) the pre-frontal cortex of the brain responsible for self control, moral judgment, and attention develops throughout childhood and adolescence. The development of this part of brain could be impaired by excessive exposure to TV and other media. In short, children require exposure to a vast range of activities, experiences, emotions and situation for healthy and balanced development of their faculties.
Conclusion: The above are very powerful findings. Though, the media violence cannot be treated as the only factor encouraging violent behavior, other things remaining the same, it does seem to have a very powerful effect. The scientific evidence is so overwhelming that all of us have to be quite sensitive to this factor. Quite often gory events are depicted in detail in the media in the name of creativity. Quite often these are done purely for commercial considerations. All of us, as responsible citizens, should detect such behavior and discourage it by rejecting such movies and TV programs. Let us keep these finds at the back of our mind while preparing our reviews. This is essential to protect our children and us in the long run. Finally, please note that modern media is quite new and we are in the process of learning how to manage it as a tool of entertainment and social change. In doing so we need to pay serious heed to the scientific evidence on its negative impact as opposed to media hype quite often promoted by commercial interests of the entertainment.
Let us discuss this issue in this forum.