Media Influences Youth Violence

Media Influences on Violence Amongst Youth

During a time when people in my generation should be focused on prom, graduation and what’s the coolest color that we can color our hair and not get suspended from school, its really disheartening that a topic such as media influences on youth violence has such a large amount of available research. The fact that we are often flooded with images of violence and countless examples of the inability of young adults to resolve conflicts without the use of violence supports the position that our culture among young adults is one centered around violence. This culture of violence is not only fueled by media influences but also on some level, some might argue, even encouraged by the images we see on our televisions or lyrics we experience in our songs. Take for example the following lyric from a popular hip hop song: “two glock 40s now you got 80 problems;” although clever and obviously representative of an author who is very intelligent, the sole point of the lyric is to promote and advocate for the use of violence as a part of everyday life. And we are often left to worry what effect do lyrics like this have on youth who aren’t yet mature enough to recognize that lyrics such as the one above are merely designed to entertain. In this paper, we will present arguments for how social media, hip hop music and television each independently foster and promote a culture of violence among youth.

Cyber bullying is defined as bullying that takes place using electronic technology. Electronic technology includes devices and equipment such as cell phones, computers, and tablets as well as communication tools including social media, sites, text messages, chat, and websites (What is Cyberbullying). Accordi...

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...e of missions. The great amount of weapons and aggressiveness in the game make is violent for youth and it has an impact in youth life today.

In conclusion we prove that arguments on how social media, hip-hop music and television each independently foster and promote a culture of violence among youth. It is proven through the way social media can result in conflicts, hip-hop portrayal towards women, and even how a simple video game can persuade young individuals to doing the wrongdoings. Though the scientific debate over whether media violence increases aggression and violence is essentially over, several critical tasks remain. Additional laboratory and field studies are needed for a better understanding of underlying psychological processes, which eventually should lead to more effective interventions such as helping the youth, or better yet, understand them.