Growing violence in children/juvenile criminal offenders (connection to media) - Essay Example

One of the aspects of the negative effect that a large consumption of television media has been shown to effect is a range of health issues within those individuals that watch a number of hours of television programming weekly. Although the negative health affects have been a topic of much recent discussion, the expressed purpose of this research analysis will be to draw a level of inference upon the way in which violence represented in television media affects the minds, outlook, psychology, and world-view interpretation of the adolescent viewing audience.

Although violence has always been a discernable and visible part of the human experience, the proliferation of violence on the television has provided a paradigm shift in the way that the shareholder, namely adolescents, engage with an understanding of this representation within the reality of culture and entertainment that television necessarily portends (Haugen & Musser 51). Ultimately, the scope and level of the violence that is represented along with the increased total viewing hours that adolescents within society are engaging with means that the level and extent to which this violence is represented has increased exponentially over time.

However, before delving further into the nature of violence and its effect as represented within television media, it is important to qualify that regardless of the effect that violence within media could have on the individual, it cannot and should not be blamed for all extant violence that exists due to the fact that violence and its representation within human society has far predated the first exhibition of television or the media in general (Kirsch 27). One of the most important aspects of the effects of the media on the adolescent mind is the way in which it causes a degree of exposure and acceptance of violent actions as a reasonable and expected means of conflict resolution.

Many studies have looked into the explosion of anger and aggression issues that have been represented lately and made convincing links and parallels to the extent to which the representation of violence within media, and specifically television, has contributed to the rise in the prevalence of these issues (von Feilitzen 19). However, regardless to the particular study that is engaged with, most authors and researchers have agreed that children and adolescent exposure to violence plays an integral part in the ultimate expression of violent behavior; or at the very least integrates an understanding among the shareholder that violent expression is an acceptable means of conflict resolution within society and culture.

One of the primal difficulties that has been enumerated upon by many researchers is the fact that it is difficult to engage appropriate research and measurement tools on the effected populations due to the fact that few parents want to admit that their children have the run of the house and can watch as much television as they wish. Due to such a constraint, seeking to gain reasonable inference on the amount of television consumed and drawing a link between the percentages of violence exhibited within this programming and the exhibition of violence, aggressive or behavioral issues within the individual becomes increasingly difficult.

As a function of understanding the extent to which television media has pervaded our current culture, it is useful to briefly examine a few statistics on the topic. Firstly, as early as the 1950’