Violent Video Games: Corrupting our Children?

Brad Bushman depicts media violence as one of the possible risk factors for violence among youth. When people are exposed to violent media, they become less impacted by it, to the point that it becomes normalized and increases violent behavior. Bushman argues that youth who are socially rejected due to aggressive behavior oftentimes find recluse in violent video games, which in turn can increase aggression, creating a “downward spiral” for the individual who is shunned by their peers.  Bushman’s depictions of youth demonstrate the adult centered perspective that invalidates the agency that youth have and views them as “youth as dependents”, who are also a danger to society.

            The notion that youth should be restrained from playing violent video games is reminiscent of “youth-as-dependents” due to the underlying assumption that youth are unable to make the right decisions for themselves.  According to this study, an adult, especially the parents, must be in charge of limiting the violence that youth are exposed too.  If they are unable to identify the violent media, Bushman and his colleagues suggest that there be better training for parents and a clearer rating system, like when the US surgeon general issued a warning on tobacco in 1964. The responsibility of the parent and the surgeon general is reminiscent of Parens Patriae, in which the nation holds the right to care for the child if the parent is unable to fulfill their parental duties. In this case, if the parents are unable to distinguish between the appropriate content for the children and the violent video games, then it is suggested that the government put in labels to help the parents make the right choice for their kids. The parental role of the government is continued in the recent tax reform bill, proposed by the House Ways and Means Committee, which ban violent video game makers from receiving their R&D Tax Credit. The fact that it is only violent video game makers and not other types of violent media demonstrates that this move is strictly based on the idea that violent video games corrupt youth. Since parental guidance has not kept violent video games away from under-aged youth, the tax reform bill would punish these companies to deter them from producing violent video games.

            There are also indications of youth as dangerous within Bushman’s study. Bushman mentions the violent shooting sprees that have been plaguing the media, specifically, the Columbine shootings in which the shooters mentioned that their actions would soon become well-known films. The notion that youth are shooting people to reach some sort of recognition by society implies that youth lack the ability to rationalize their thoughts and are instead led by their emotions.  The warning that aggressive youth who are rejected from society tend to gather with other aggressive youth, making them more aggressive, and therefore more dangerous clearly shows the persistent adult-centered fear of the super-predators that threaten society’s order. The efforts to restrict media violence, specifically video games, among youth demonstrates the continued belief that youth must be taken care of so that they do not lose their morality.

Bushman, Brad J., Margaret Hall, and Robert Randal. Youth Violence What We Need to Know: Media Violence and Youth Violence. National Science Foundation, 2013. Print.

Peckham, Matt. "Inane Tax Reform Bill Provision Would Sting Makers of “Violent Video Games”." Time. 27 Feb. 2014. Web. 2 Mar. 2014.

The media's portrayal of youth v. the reality

Since the 1980s, the media has portrayed youth as a dangerous class. It illustrates that youth are increasingly dangerous even though data show that there has been a downward trend of youth violence in the recent decades, particularly in minority communities. In fact, adults are often the ones to abuse children. When comparing the statistics to the media’s portrayal of youth, one sees that the media creates a false image of youth as a danger instead of emphasizing the injustice that many youth face because of that image.

             The media has created a negative stigma towards black and Latino youth. With the rise of rap and hip-hop in the last few decades, statistics in Male’s article show that crime rates for youth have decreased rather than increased. Despite the evidence, the media continuously magnifies the violence among minority youth and attributes the violence to the current music trends. Recently in Florida, a few black teenage boys were playing loud music in their car. A white man, Michael Dunn, parked his car next to theirs, claimed that when the youths turned on the music and screamed, “Kill him”, they were referring to him. Dunn then shot into the car, killing Jordan Davis. This is testimony that there is a negative connotation associated with black youth playing certain music. Davis’s father explains in the New York Times’ Op-Doc video that black youth are unfairly perceived as dangerous. The media perpetuated the idea that the youth were dangerous although Davis was unarmed and ultimately the victim. Even though he wasn’t doing anything harmful, Davis was seen as a threat to a white man because he was playing loud music.

            What the media also does not show is that youth are often the victims of abuse within families. According to Male, in 1995 hundreds of thousands of children were killed or abused by their families. The Bureau of Justice Statistics states that violence caused by relatives is a common reason that people go to the hospital. More specifically, while the media is quick to call black youth more dangerous than others, it fails to note that they are more likely the targets of abuse from drug or alcohol addicted adults than a threat to others. While the media focuses on black youth as dangerous they seem to neglect to highlight the adults around them who have victimized them. They are also at increased risk of an unstable family. Among many stories that cast black youth as a danger, there are very few that highlight the adults who have victimized them.

            The media often does not consider that the negative attention on youth may mask the underlying problems caused by adults. The media wants their audiences to see the world a certain way but its consistent failure to project the reality of young people puts those lives in danger. In reality, many youth need to be saved, but this message rarely makes the broadcasts. Youth cannot be saved if no one knows about their struggles.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/opinion/when-loud-music-turned-deadly.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

-Bridget McDonagh

Victims of Vindication

In Framing Youth: Ten Myths About the Next Generation Mike Males describes and analyses various representations of youth in the media and reveals the logical fallacies in the reasoning that justifies these representations and the outright falsities asserted in them. Youth are portrayed in media as a direly perplexed group that culminate the issues of drugs, violence, deviance, manipulation (being the subjects of), and mindlessness. The way anything is portrayed in media has a significant effect on how the public views the given issue, thus making the issue of youth portrayal in media a serious one.

Males examines various myths about youth and shows how statistics completely disagree with such myths.  One example is the concern about youth and the danger the Internet poses to them. He notes the preoccupation with children becoming victims of pedophiles through communication on the internet, and how in reality there are very few cases per year. Cases of teenage driving and teenage violence are also used as examples of statistical disagreements with the media’s representation of youth. Although statistics don’t provide indisputable evidence in many cases due to various variables, small sample sizes as compared to the whole (potential anomalies and variations may skew the statistics), they appear to work in the cases in which Males uses them. And after all, they are meant to provide support for his overall argument, not meant to be his overall argument.

Males furthermore describes how many of the media portrayals of youth also blames them for various problems and how certain flaws in youth, such as gullibility or vulnerability are the routes of such issues. He gives an example in which Rolling Stone article  “Death in a Schoolyard” asserts youth are obsessed with violent entertainment and cites that and youth culture as indirect causes of school shootings. The article uses skewed and careless statistics to argue the point, while failing to be diligent and properly consider equally pressing problems of adults.

Each example given by Males in someway represents the view of youth at the time “as not-quite-adults.” In each example youth are represented as something less than adults, with diminished capacity but not beyond saving (concerns about vulnerability to media manipulation, concerns about vulnerability to the internet, concerns about vulnerability to violent entertainment etc). Other examples also show the overlap between past and modern views. For example, in the teenage driving example youth are thought of as dangerous drivers i.e. “youth as a dangerous class.” In general this shows how each temporal view see youth as something separate from adults.

The way the media represents youth, however, in such examples is problematic because of how detrimental they are to the perception of youth and how misguided they are in general. Youth are not-so-much in need of fixing as the way the media represents youth is in need of fixing.