Impact: Violent Media on Young Minds

Blog Post #3

Gerard Jones' argument on the impact of violent media on children and teens shed some light on the positive effects that these media can have. He states that kids can develop leadership skills by looking up to their comic book heroes, or become more creative by being inspired to make wild stories of their own. Further, video games are very much like these comic books in that they provide a chance for young people to release negative emotions without any grizzly aftermath.

However, though there seems to be some developmental benefits to early exposure of violence to children, some effects can be equally as devastating. Sometimes, these kinds of outlets can have the opposite influence on kids. Instead of becoming less frustrated or angry when playing a first-person shooter, the player can instead become cavalier when it comes to murder in real life. This is the kind of situation that could, and has, snowballed into a huge problem. All it takes is one psychologically unstable child or teen who confuses reality with a game to start a shooting. Jones realizes this in his article and refutes it further by going on to describe how the benefits outweigh the downfalls.

This is a very real scenario, and there have been at least 14 cases in which the shooter was influenced or was said to have played many violent video games according to this site. For example, Evan Ramsey, a young high school student was convicted after reportedly shooting four people, expecting them to get back up because this was a mechanic in the game Doom that he had been playing. Therefore, violent media is a volatile instrument that can either make or break your child's mentality due to its exposure to certain aspects of life that children are most likely not ready to process