Columbine High Tech Violence Research Paper

It was a day of mourning in Littleton, Colorado after Columbine High School suffered a deadly shooting, leaving 12 students and 1 teacher dead along with 24 others injured. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are the perpetrators responsible for the massacre, both students in their last year at the school. Many people are left curious as to why the two boys did what they did. Was the intent to kill as many people as they could? Investigators later found that around 11:10am the pair walked into the cafeteria and placed 2 duffel bags each containing a 20 pound propane bomb set to explode at 11:17am. The boys then went back outside to wait for the bombs to go off. When the bombs failed to detonate, Eric and Dylan began their shooting spree. “Do You

Emeka Odukwu Mrs. Patterson Honors English The contributions of Mental health in the Columbine shooting On April 20, 1999, two teenage boys killed twelve students, and one faculty member, and then proceeded to commit suicide at the high school they attended. At the time, this event would be recognized as the largest mass shooting in American History. The media portrayed the perpetrators as horrible, sick people because of their atrocious crime. However, a closer look behind the reasons that drove them to such violence shows that a psychiatrist may have even diagnosed them with an mental illness.

The media has the potential to yield many negative effects in the development of a child. Media violence can lead to aggression in children. As mentioned earlier, an average person has viewed approximately 15,000 hours of television by the time they graduate high school. In that time, it is said that almost 18,000 acts of violence including murders, robbery, beating, bombing, and assault will be viewed. With the extent of this data, there is a definite correlation between the media and aggression in youth. The more violence students watch on television or are exposed to from different media sources, the more prone they are to be violent and aggressive as they get older, especially during adulthood. Studies have shown that even small exposure

It is a matter of great importance how much of media content children are exposed to and what exactly they are viewing on media. The issue of violence is not a new phenomenon among children and keeps increasing with time and change in technology and information technology. The causes of violence in children are seen to be multifactorial and exposure of children to media violence is said to be an important factor when it comes to the etiology of behaviors that are violent among children.

Numerous studies conducted in the past have clearly demonstrated that exposure to media violence does have a significant influence on violent and aggressive behavior. This is particularly the case amongst children where fictional media violence has been linked to increased aggression both in the short-term and in the long-term. This text highlights the extent to which media violence is related to violent/aggressive behavior.

306). Brad Bushman, in his journal titled Moderating Role of Trait Aggressiveness in the Effects of Violent Media on Aggression, shares the shocking statistic that by the time a child makes the switch from elementary school to middle school, they will have witnessed over 8,000 murders and, even more shockingly, over 100,000 other violent acts (950). This statistic alone should make parents deeply concerned. By elementary school age alone, children are exposed to about 110,000 acts of violence of varying degrees. As children continue to view these harmful images, they begin to learn that a stimulus, such as a knife, means violence and harm (Levesque 41).

For years now, researches have been studying the correlation between violent media and the aggression in children. Undoubtedly the conclusion is that violent media does indeed increase the aggressive nature in kids.

Concrete evidence suggests exposure to violent media can “trigger short-term aggressive behaviour” which usually lasts a couple hours or days . Charlton et al. (2000) carried out a research study called “St. Helena Study” aimed to investigate the effects of television on children’s behaviour. His findings however hardly suggest an impact of televisions on children’s behaviour. Thus, far more research needs to be undertaken before drawing a conclusion on media related violence.

It is nearly impossible to imply that violence in the media does not have an affect on an individuals perception of the world, however, to what degree it can actually influence an individuals behavior is the real question needed to be answered. According to Douglas Gentile his research demonstrates that there are six risk factors that can be used to help determine the possibility of predicting if an individual will demonstrate violent behavior later in life. According to Gentile, in a study he recently published he stated, “…Media exposure as 1 of the 6 risk factors for predicting later aggression in 430 children (aged 7 to 11, grades 3 to 5) from Minnesota schools. Besides media violence, the remaining risk factors are bias toward hostility, low parental involvement, participant sex, physical victimization, and prior physical fights” (As cited in Kaplan, Para. 26).

Media violence is one of the most debated public issues society faces today. Television screens are loaded with the glamorization of weapon carrying. Violence constitute as amusing and trivialized. Needless portrayals of interpersonal violence spread across the television screens like wild fire. Televisions spew the disturbing events such as children being assaulted, husbands inflicting domestic abuse on their wives and children succumbing to abuse by their parents. Scenes of betrayal, anguish, infiltrate the television screen. Unfortunately, a child becomes subjected to media violence. Everything a child sees or hears in the media affects them in some way or another. The precise effects of media violence on children are

The potential relationship between media violence and actual aggression comes to the forefront of public discussion, but unfortunately this discussion rarely takes into account the science related to the relationship between media violence and aggressive behavior. In particular, there is a widespread assumption that media violence directly causes aggression and aggressive behavior, and this assumption has become so common that even secondary scholarly discussions of the evidence have taken to relying on it despite the fact that there is no evidence for a causal relationship between the consumption of media violence and aggressive behavior. While there is evidence suggesting a link between the two, correlation does not equal causation, and examining this evidence in detail will help make the case that there is no direct cause and effect relationship between media violence and aggressive behavior while simultaneously demonstrating the fallacy inherent in the counter arguments that have been proposed.

Essentially since media is more violent than ever, and children and youth are getting more attracted to violent media. Studies on violent media shows a clear evidence that violence on media rises the possibility of aggressive behaviors in both short-term and long-term situations (Rowell Huesmann, Moise, Podolski, & Eron, 2003). Most researchers agree that aggressive behaviors are more disposed to

Viewing violence encourages children to see other people as enemies rather as individuals with thoughts and feelings like themselves. Violent scenes less arouses children whom watch a lot of TV than those who only watch a little. They are less bothered by violence in general and less likely to see anything wrong with it. "For example, in several studies, children who watched a violent program instead of a non-violent one were less quick to intervene or to call for

As evidence has shown, children view many violent scenes while watching television, movies, or playing video games, but the question still remains: What psychological effect does violence in the media have on children? Research over the past 10 years has consistently shown that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between media violence and real-life aggression (Strasburger 129). Violence in the media can lead to aggressive behavior by children and teenagers who watch the various programs. Of course, not all children who watch television, or movies, or play video games develop aggressive behavior. However, there is a strong correlation between media violence and aggressive behavior. A study, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry, examined how children's television viewing practices are related to aggressive behaviors. The results revealed that children who reported watching greater amounts of television per day had higher levels of violent behavior than children who reported lesser amounts of television viewing (Singer 1041). Witnessing violence is an important determining factor in violent behavior. The media serves as a means for children to witness violence. According to Bandura's Social Learning Theory, children imitate behavior that they see on television, especially if the person performing the behavior is attractive or if the

          Due to violence on television, children become less sensitive to that pain and suffering of others or to become more aggressive to others. It also makes children more fearful to the world around them. (Abelard 1) Viewing habits of children observed for many decades deduced that violence on TV is associated with aggressive behavior, more than poverty, race, or parental behavior. It also reported that a TV show contains about 20 acts of violence an hour.