Impact of Media

A Study on Media Culture’s Negative Influence on Children
WANG Da-wei
(Media Management School, Communication University of China, Beijing 100097, China )
Abstract: The link between media culture and its real world effect has been a hot topic for many years.
Many people believe that media have an obviously bad effect on children. More than 1000 studies conducted in the past 40 years show that excessive exposure to media violence causes the violent behavior in real life. Some other researches prove that media contain heavy messages that promote unhealthy habits or antisocial behaviors.
This might be true. However, people often overstate the effects of media on children. Media are not the only elements that can lead to children’s violence, antisocial behavior and bad habits. Other factors, like society, parents, communities, can also influence their behavior. In fact, if we can control the exposure to media in moderation, our children can benefit a lot from media culture.
Key words: media violence; children; influence
Hundreds of research studies over the past forty years have clearly shown that there is a strong relationship between viewing violence in television programs and movies and aggressive behavior of children, youth, and adults. However, it is really difficult to prove a direct connection between them. It is described like “watching rain fall on a pond and trying to figure out which drop causes which ripple” (Phillips, cited by Elyse, 1998).
1. Negative Effects of Media
1.1 Experimental studies
Many of the best-known studies of the effects of violent television upon children are experimental. This is a preferred method of many psychologists working in this field. Different conclusions have been made. Some studies prove that there are links between television viewing and antisocial behaviour. Others claim positive effects. And some show that there are no links at all.
Albert Bandura based his observational learning theory on the bobo doll studies. He made a film in which a young woman essentially assaulted a bobo doll, shouting “sockeroo!” This film was shown to groups of kindergartners. Then they had a chance to play in the room with new bobo dolls and little hammers. Observers recorded their actions and compared the children who saw the film with children who hadn’t. Some children who watched the film were found to be more aggressive in their play. They imitated the young lady in the film (Boeree,
1998). These laboratory studies show that if children are exposed to aggression in the media, although this was set up artificially, they can become more aggressive.
Previous researches have mostly relied on studies in artificial laboratory conditions, which can only provide limited kinds of evidence. In common all these studies had a principal weakness: they lack the real life experiences. For example, in the “Bobo doll” study, children are left in a room with the bobo doll. What would the
WANG Da-wei (1975- ), female, M.A., teaching assistant of Media Management School, Communication University of China; research fields: mass media and culture, media economics.
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adults do apart from attacking the doll, if they were left there? Even the children know that the doll is not alive and does not suffer pain. And unlike human beings the bobo doll does not hit back (Durkin, 1995).
1.2 Social Learning Theory
This observational effect is also called Social Learning Theory. Albert Bandura (1977) used it specifically to explain media effects. Adults and children acquire attitudes, emotional responses and new styles of conduct through “modeling” of films and television. The major premise is that we learn by observing others. Four steps combine a cognitive view and an operant view of learning.
(1) Attention—the individual notices something in the environment
(2) Retention—the individual remembers what was noticed
(3) Reproduction—the individual produces an action that is a copy of what was noticed
(4) Motivation—the individual is motivated to imitate. Motivation refers to rewards and punishments, i.e. you will not do anything unless you have some reason for doing it.
Rewards and punishments are, traditionally, considered to be the things that “cause” learning. Bandura sees them as motives. An observer anticipates a reward for certain behaviors because somebody else has been so rewarded. Of course, the negative motivations, i.e. punishments, are there as well, giving you reasons not to imitate someone. While, like most traditional behaviorists, Bandura says that punishment in whatever form does not work as well as reinforcement and, in fact, has a tendency to “backfire” on us.
“Children learn by observing media violence greatly when the media hero commits violent behavior, when the child believes the violent show is telling a real life story, when the aggressor is rewarded for the violent action, when the aggression is portrayed as justified, and when the child focuses his or her attention on the screen”
(Huesmann, 2002). For instance, many media contain messages about cigarettes. When children see actors and actresses smoking on screen and see signs for tobacco products at concerts and sports events, some of them might make a conclusion from these massages that smoking makes a person fascinating and attractive. Most kids cannot realize the health risks they are facing when they use these products. “Teens who see a lot of ads for … cigarettes admit that it influences them to want to …smoke. It is not by chance that the three most advertised cigarette brands are also the most popular ones smoked by teens” (ibid). There may be a link between cigarette advertising and child smoking.
1.3 Arousal Hypothesis
Arousal Hypothesis is one of the theories of media violence set up by Tannenbaum. He believes that exposure to media violence increases aggression because violence increases excitation or “arouses” viewers
(Tannenbaum & Zillman, 1975).
Playing violent video games may have even a greater relationship to aggressive behavior than viewing violent television programs and movies because children are actively engaged in the violent video game, not just being passive viewers. In this way they are more aroused and excited. “Playing a violent video game for as little as 20 minutes causes an increase in aggressive thinking, an increase in aggressive feelings like anger, an increase in physiological arousal, for example heart rate, an increase in aggressive behavior, and a decrease in prosocial, helping behaviors” (Anderson, 2002).
Media violence has a particularly strong impact on young children, who blur fantasy and reality. Most of the older children and adults may regard the fantastic portrayal of violence as ridiculous and unrealistic, while the younger children strongly believe that they are true stories. Even from the daily life we can see that young children are willing to imitate violent cartoon characters, such as Batman, and superheroes with magical powers.
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“Cartoon violence is one of the most likely forms to promote imitation”, said Joanne Cantor, a communications professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It normalizes violence and also trivializes violence in a way by focusing not on negative consequences of violence but making it funny” (Germain, 2000). Parents should not assume that a cartoon or any other type of program is okay for their children simply because it is made for kids. The most vulnerable viewers are children, who happen to be targeted by some of the most harmful portrayals of violence on television.
1.4 Disinhibition Hypothesis
Another theory investigated by L. Berkowitz (1962) called “Disinhibition Hypothesis” explains that interpersonal aggression will be increased by some certain circumstances: where violence is rewarded; where similar situations are in the current environment; where the environment has a target. This is because the inhibitions against such behavior have been weakened. Children constantly talk about violent programs in school.
Gradually they come to accept violence as a way to solve problems. For instance, they are more likely to hit their playmates, argue, disobey class rules and are less willing to be patient for what they want.
Some theorists argue that the constant media diet of violence desensitizes audiences, that is to say, makes them less sensitive to real human suffering. “Young people becoming desensitized to violence means that they gradually come to not be aroused by violent scenes and to not be bothered by violence in general” (Nikolaos,
1998). They believe that children regard screen violence as play or show and with some unknown reasons become
“immune” to the horror of violence. Finally this makes them less sensitive to the pain and suffering of other people. Furthermore, violence can be accepted as the only way to resolve problems and conflicts.
1.5 Antisocial behavior
Media violence encourages antisocial behavior. High levels of Internet users have been found to spend below average time with other people, to communicate less than normal and to feel more depressed and lonely (Kraut et al., 1998). A great deal of research suggests that spending large amounts of time with electronic media may lead to negative cognitive, emotional, and physical consequences for children. Under some circumstances, they affect children indirectly by infringing on other activities. Adult Internet users say that they take part in fewer activities, spend less time with family and friends, and read less newspaper because of the Internet. Compared with light viewers, children who are heavy TV viewers also have fewer hobbies and engage in fewer physical activities. It may be good for children to participate in some nonelectronic media events (Huston et al., 1992).
1.6 Lasting impact
Media violence has a lasting impact on children. Media violence does not need to affect adults directly in order to make adults more aggressive. More aggressive adults may have been affected years earlier when they were children. A study conducted by psychologists Dr. Leonard Eron and Dr. Rowell Huesmann continued for decades. It began in 1960.
They took 800 eight-year-olds and found that children who watched many hours of violent television tended to be more aggressive in the playground and the classroom. They checked back with these kids 11 and 22 years later. They found the aggressive eight-year-olds grew up to become even more aggressive (Elyse, 1998).
2. Positive Effects of Violent Media
Some researches describe children as helpless victims under the media’s influence, while some other studies have shown that children are capable of talking critically and intelligently about the media and that 7-year-old
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children are able to make “media literate” productions themselves (Buckingham, 1996). Media violence may have some positive effects as well.
2.1 Catharsis Theory
Although violent media definitely has negative effects upon our children, some scholars have asserted positive effects as well. One common theory, called the Catharsis Theory cites violent media as a potential outlet for aggression and decreased real-world violence as a result.
Cathartic effect originated with the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, who believed that the experience of watching tragedy is cathartic. That is to say, it purges the audience of certain strong emotions. As a result of experiments by Feshbach & Singer (1971), this idea has been developed in media effects research. Watching aggressive media output is not proposed to make viewers more aggressive. On the contrary, since the aggression experienced through the media gives the viewer a catharsis of aggression, watching violence leads to less aggression. Therefore, the catharsis theory suggests that violent video games channel a child’s aggression and stop them from being aggressive in real life. So violent content might be good!
If the catharsis theory is correct then violent media can relieve aggressive feelings and prevent aggression in real life. Media have both pro-social effects and anti-social ones. Therefore, media cannot be completely blamed for aggression; there are other factors to be considered that could influence the person, particularly a child. The child’s upbringing, home environment, background, culture, peers, along with other social elements could all influence any possible aggressive behavior. The media alone cannot be blamed for all aggression; other factors have to be taken into account.
2.2 The caution function of media
Although people commonly believe in the negative influence of media violence, some effects of media violence can be positive, especially from the caution function perspective. If children are totally protected from media violence, they may imagine that the world is peaceful and perfect and people are always nice to each other.
Such children may grow up to be naïve and ignorant. They can not be fully aware of and cautious to the harsh reality of life. On the contrary, children, who are exposed to media violence, learn from media how to deal with dangerous situations and are less vulnerable.
In order to measure the media’s caution function, a research was carried out to test children’s reaction to strangers’ visiting. Basically, with the parents’ permission, the author visited 100 children (age 6-9) at home when their parents were out. These children were told that the visitors were friends of their parents. After a casual chat they asked the children to lend them some money. Different children reacted very differently. Some lent the money immediately, some hesitated, some tried to contact their parents, and some refused to talk to the stranger from the beginning.
Among children who refused the strangers, 30 percent said that they learned from media that the perpetrators cheat children or kidnap them. And the other 30 percent said that their parents always tell them not to talk to strangers. Therefore, children tend to be more cautious about their actions or what they say to strangers after accessing, to some extent, violent media. In this way media violence can be useful. It helps children to better understand this imperfect world and accept violence as a reality of our society. In turn, this may help them to act appropriately in dangerous situations.
2.3 The case of St Helena Island
The Media Quotient (Gentile & Walsh, 1999) research shows the different ways in which family media habits affect children. A child follows some models in their life such as parents, guardians and relatives to set up
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their own ideas, opinions and believes. If these people get involved in children’s lives and pay attention to what kind of media children are exposed to, they can prevent the negative effects and promote some positive understanding of the media content. Knowledgeable parents are more capable to maximize the benefits and minimize the harm of these media. They know how to discuss the media content with children, share the feeling and ideas conveyed by media in order to help children understand media properly. In this case, before children are affected by the bad side of media or have a psychological problem, we can help them and stop the situation from becoming more serious.
Professor Tony Charlton (2000) and his colleagues seized the opportunity to gather data using a whole population of children to compare their pre- and post-TV-watching behaviour. St Helena, one of the world’s most remote inhabited islands, had no access to TV. The researchers of this project started to collect data two years before television was introduced to this island. The data collected by observing children in classroom and school play grounds showed that children studied hard and behaved well. After television came to St Helena Island, they repeated the same measures in each of the next five years. They sampled children’s viewing, analyzed the programs content watched by children and indicated the amount of violence seen. They compared viewers’ and non-viewers’ behavior, investigated the connection between children’s behavior and the levels of violence they saw (Charlton, 2000).
After five years of viewing, they find that television does not inevitably influence children’s social behaviour in adverse ways as people have predicted. This result is contrary to most other researches.
Why? The students explained that they had difficulties taking part in the antisocial behaviour on this island.
Because people there know each other very well, the others can see everything you do. That is to say, children’s behaviour is more shaped by family, school, neighbourhood and social community rather than media exposure.
From the St Helena studies we can see that healthy family, neighbourhood and community forces can all shape children’s behaviour at the same time. If the young children have fewer chances to practise what they learn from violent media, they can grow up healthily. Studies of parenting and interventions have shown that
…parents of anti-social children are deficient in their methods of child-rearing. The parents do not tell the children how they expect them to behave, fail to monitor the behaviour to ensure it is desirable, and fail to enforce rules promptly and clearly with appropriate positive and negative reinforcement. The reinforcement for aggression in these anti-social children is provided directly in the parenting process force.
(Frederick P Rivara & David P Farrington, 1995: 142-29)
Without the watchful eyes of their parents, relatives and neighbours, children can watch TV, play video games and access Internet as much as they want, which give them unlimited scope to learn and imitate anti-social behaviour. We cannot say these are all media’s fault.
3. Conclusion
The various forms of electronic media that we have developed during the 20th century are very powerful.
Because they are so powerful, they can benefit or harm our children. This depends on how they are used. Children should be protected from the negative influence of media. But our children need good TV and movies. They are wonderful cultural and educational instruments. Wise use of media can help develop knowledge and skills, as well as provide engaging entertainment. However, unwise use can be harmful. We should try our best to maximize the benefits and minimize the harm of these technologies to create a healthier media diet for our children. What we
A Study on Media Culture’s Negative Influence on Children