Exposure to violence affects behaviour

Teenagers who are exposed to violent media, particularly violent websites, are more likely to indulge in violent behaviour themselves. Many studies have examined the relationship between exposure to violent media (games, music, T.V., cinema, internet) and violent behaviour among young people. To further examine the association between media violence and seriously violent behaviour that includes shooting or stabbing, robbing, or committing aggravated or sexual assault, researchers from America surveyed 1,588 boys and girls aged between 10 and 15 years. The average age of the participants was 13 years old and 48 percent of them were girls. The researchers interviewed children and their parents about the kind of websites they surfed and other media they were exposed to. Five percent of the participants were found to be engaged in some type of seriously violent behaviour over the past one year, while 38 percent reported to having visited at least one type of violent website. With each additional type of violent website viewed, the likelihood of violent behaviour increased by 50 percent. Further, those who surfed websites that showed real people killing someone or engaging in violent behaviour were five-times more likely to engage in seriously violent behaviour than their peers who didn't visit violent websites. The study found that the odds of violent behaviour also rose with the number of types of violent media a young person was exposed to, but the effect of violent TV, movies, music, games or Internet cartoons was much smaller than that of Internet violence depicting real people. The above findings add to the growing evidence that exposure to violence in the media is related to aggressive behaviour, including seriously violent behaviour among youth and newer forms of violent media seem to be especially concerning. A reduction in youths' exposure to violent media should be viewed as an important aspect of violence prevention. The study, however, does not answer the questions whether violent media is turning kids violent, or whether violence-prone youth are more likely to seek out violence on the Internet, or whether a bit of both is going on. This linkage requires further research.

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