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Media Violence and the Violent Male Adolescent Essays

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Media Violence and the Violent Male Adolescent

My research led me to form some new hypotheses on the correlation of violence in the media, namely television, movies, and video games, to the rise in violent behavior in adolescents. For this essay, I will focus on male adolescents. I will use multiple lenses for my research to (1) establish the increase in violent acts by adolescents in the past two decades; (2) use proven research to show the impact of media violence on the individual; and (3) to illustrate my "recipe for disaster," four correlations that contribute to the effects of media violence on male adolescents.

Rise in Youth Violence

According to the United States Department of Justice ("DOJ"), (1999) …show more content…

The majority of these studies reach the same conclusion: television and film violence leads to real-world violence" (Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 1999). Many of the studies I researched reported similar statistics with more emphasis on male adolescents.

My recipe for disaster focuses on the following four correlations: (1) susceptibility of the individual/prevalent traits (males), (2) social isolation, (3) exposure to violence, and (4) reenacting the violent behavior.

1. Susceptibility: Gender studies and Violence

The first factor contributing to adolescent violence deals with individual predispositions and susceptibility toward violent influences. The male appears to have a greater tendency towards violence and is shown in studies to find more enjoyment in violent acts. A Social Psychologist in the 1980s initiated a study on media violence and behavior in males: Josephson (1987) examined the combined effects of exposure to violence in films and retrieval cues with aggressive and non-aggressive second and third grade boys. His hypothesis confirmed that the boys who were previously rated as aggressive did increase their violent behavior, more so when frustration was added to the experiment. His possible conclusions were that children imitated the low self-control of the characters in the film, and engaged in deviant behavior. He calls his theory "stress

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