How Violence in the Media Influences Today's Society: Sarah McCann

How Violence in the Media Influences Today’s Society 

In today’s society when watching television, it is difficult to avoid viewing violence on a daily basis. As our entertainment revolves around sex, drugs, and rock and roll, we wonder why we have so many infamous acts of torture and why our youth wants to be 13 going on 30. Studies show that more than 50% of children have a TV in their bedroom, and that more than 65% believe that their peers are influenced by TV shows. This is a major issue because observing sexual and violent acts repeatedly can desensitize someone and make sex and violence seem like a casual thing. In fact, studies show that “Television programs display 812 violent acts per hour; children's programming, particularly cartoons, displays up to 20 violent acts hourly.”(aacap.org). This can be especially dangerous to children growing up since the average time kids spend watching TV each day is about 4 hours(parentstv.org). So growing up with this much corruption and exposure on TV in today’s world, a few more souls are bound to take the wrong turn on the path of life. Steven Miles, Thierry Jaradin, and Martin Bryant most definitely took the wrong path in terms of exposure.

Steven Miles was only 16 when he murdered his girlfriend Elizabeth Thomas by stabbing her in the head and back and then continuing to dismember her in Oxted, Surrey. He decided to do this after being obsessed with the TV show “Dexter”, a show about a serial killer that only kills bad people. Miles has been sentenced to 25 years.
(mirror.co.uk) Thierry Jaradin, was 24 years old when he decided to make 15 year old Alisson Cambier his victim. After luring her to his house and her refusing his sexual pass, he changed into the whole ensemble of the film "Scream" and stabbed her over 30 times. He later told police that the director's movies motivated him to do the crime. (moviepilot.com)

 Martin Bryant was 29 when he based his crime off of the film “ Child’s Play” . “(he)killed 35 people and injured 23 others in the Port Arthur massacre”(moviepilot.com). He was later pronounced a schizophrenic, but his obsession with the movie was most definitely a factor in his violence. He was obsessed with how the doll could be so violent yet so childish.

    Even if there is just a causal connection between the violence, the violence is still there, and the chance of the violence because of the media not being there, still stands. Psychologists tend to agree that over time children become reflections of their parents, but children are also taught to be reflections of our surroundings. A psychological term called “nature vs. nurture” explains that some of our traits and interests are born with us, other traits and interests develop over time amongst our surroundings (explorable.com). This term becomes useful in the topic of media violence exposure because if you were born a passive person(or god forbid, you were already born aggressive) but over time were exposed to too much violence and became a serial killer, this could seriously affect the rest of your life. This scenario could have very much been part of the reason Steven Miles, Thierry Jaradin, and Martin Bryant all decided to go off on TV or movie based killing sprees.