Many teenagers are now being introduced into playing or watching violent media at very young ages and society are wondering if they should be concerned about it; they are wondering whether it can cause aggressive behaviour within the children/teenagers.
Violent video games and violent action films normally have age restriction son them so that children under the age of 15 or in some cases 18 cannot buy them. You see many teenagers with these games and movies as parents to buy the media for them, this can then be argued if they have parents consent it is okay for them to play them on the other hand the age restrictions are there for a reason and should be listened to. As well as being bought by parents, teenagers can also access violent media on the internet as it is very easy for them to download the material from the internet. Being able access the media so easily the age restriction does not have an effect for many teenagers. Popular games such as ‘Call of Duty’, ‘Gears of War’ and ‘Halo’ are played by teenagers everywhere and are said to be violent. These games do create violent images of death and seriously wounded characters and as the games are very interactive it could lead to the person playing these games to feel aggressive.
There has been psychological experiments been taken place that involve investigating aggression and how it has an effect. The study of Bandura shows how aggression can be intercepted by children just by watching a video. This is evidence that children do get influenced by others behaviours and supports that violent media should be banned. Albert Bandura (1977) tested 36 boys and 36 girls from Stanford University nursery ages between 3 and 6. Under controlled conditions, 24 boys and girls watched a male or female role model (according on the gender of the child) behaving aggressively towards a ‘Bobo doll’ they also made distinctive sound effects like ‘pow’ and ‘boom’. Meanwhile the other 24