Jillian Morrin

Violence in the Media

In todays society, many of our actions portray ideas from the media. The media that is
viewed in America depicts the actions of the American people. The social media we allow
ourselves to view is processed into our brains and is acted upon. Unfortunately, an electronic
device can brainwash someone into becoming a criminal easily nowadays. The effects of media
in todays society show our violent actions such as aggressive behavior, aggressive thoughts, and
aggressive emotions.
Aggressive behavior is defined as a physical act that is intended to harm or aggravate
another person. This kind of behavior exists in people who have a drive of anger. This kind of
behavior is typically shown in teenage students to young adults. People who have had life
changing physical events in their lifetime tend to show this type of behavior. There are other
people who have not experienced hardship who also have an aggressive behavior as well. Media
violence is a way to experience the role of aggressive behavior.
Media violence plays a huge role in portraying aggressive behavior. The physical
violence that is shown in video game images and in the news on television sets an example for
children and adults who view these images. Young boys and girls look up to heroes in video
games and on movies. Meaning that whatever the heroes do, they also do, or attempt to do. If a
child enjoys the role of a villain and wants to look up to the villain as a role model, they will
follow in the villains footsteps, thus making them act the part of a villain.
Jillian Morrin
The physical violence of the hero and villain battles sets a negative example for the
children who experience these video games and films. The children then think that it is okay to
hurt and kill people. According to an article in the Developmental Psychology magazine, the
perception of television violence being realistic to children links the children to further
aggressive behavior when they become young adults, for both males and females.
Cyber bullying loiters around the internet today. Once something is posted on the internet,
it will always be there no matter how much you delete it. The hardware will always have
memory of the post. The things that people post on websites come from random thoughts that
occur in an instant. Twitter is a huge social media website currently. Twitter is a website where
people tweet random thoughts that come to their mind.
Thoughts are subjective to what you input into your brain. What you witness and view to
gather information from, are put into your brain and stays there forever even if you want to
forget about it. Those things you remember and think about are the things you will speak about
freely with others.
Thoughts influenced by violence in social media, tend to come out as aggressive thoughts.
Thoughts such as sexual activities against a persons will, physically harming someone, or even
lyrics pertaining to negative activities, can cause someone to have aggressive thoughts. By
watching movies about romances turning into murder, women obsessing over a spouse or
boyfriend, listening to music about raping women, stealing money, or even viewing rude remarks
to someone on a social media site such as Facebook or Twitter, can cause someone to think about
a lot of different actions that could become realistic.
Jillian Morrin
These actions are in their heads now and saved into their brains, but one little thing could
set a person off and cause them to use those thoughts actively. This could cause a criminal
offense to occur which could affect them as well as the person they harmed emotionally or
physically. Aggressive thoughts could seem innocent until proven guilty and harmful. These
thoughts could be avoided through blocking off violent images and music to people.
Even the most innocent person can turn violent through witnessing something that could
seem intriguing to them to view. There are plenty of films that show suicide as an okay escape
from the realistic life they live. That emotional and physical aggression toward their own body
creates a huge harm for themselves. Movies such as The Matrix and To Save a Life may seem
innocent and unrealistic, but these emotions and thoughts of potentially committing suicide could
affect someone elses opinion on suicide. These films may be leading people to view that suicide
is okay and is completely harmless to others, but it is still considered a crime, homicide.
Aggressive emotions such as anger, revenge, depression, and many other negative
emotions can cause people to hurt others or potentially hurt themselves. Slow music with lyrics
about not being able to go on, break ups, and plenty of other depressing themes, can cause people
to live life negatively. Aggressive emotions such as anger and revenge can come from viewing
movies like Pearl Harbor or other war related movies. These films can cause someone to view
revenge as being acceptable. Even though revenge is not accepted in the world today, people still
think it is allowed and they still portray it as good. Aggressive emotions can affect a persons
ability to think clearly. Things like suicide, murder, stealing, and metal diseases can come from
thinking it is socially acceptable to do bad things because people in films and music do it.
Jillian Morrin
Media violence from television, films, and music can cause many different violent effects
on people in todays society. Aggressive behavior, thoughts, and emotions are caused by media
violence. These aggressive actions are harmful and can result in criminal offenses.

Works Cited
http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2003/03/media-violence.aspx
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2704015/
http://psi.sagepub.com/content/4/3/81.abstract