Articles

Violent Video Games: The Effects on Youth, and Public Policy Implications.

"Years of research documents how witnessing violence and aggression leads to a range of negative  out comes for children."  This article expresses how parents are so naïve when it comes to violence and their children.  "The same parents who take great pains to keep children from witnessing violence in the home an neighborhood often do little to keep them from viewing large quantities of violence on television, in movies, and in video games."  This article touches on the games that were released and what the games consisted of.  In  1972 the first commercial video game, Pong was released.   As time kept passing, the violent the games got.  Pong was a "Ping-Pong" game where all you had to do was hit the "ball" with "paddles,"  this game was not mainly about violence, but by "1992, a major step forward in realism was taken by the game Wolfenstein 3D."  This game was the "major first person shooter game.  In this kind of game, one sees the video game world though the eyes of the character one controls, rather than seeing it from afar."  However, this article talks about the correlation studies and it amuses me how people can be so naïve.  When children see violence its something that they find cool. It's very interesting how some parents let their children play violent games when they brains have not quite develop by the age of 9-12; most violent games are rated 18+ because children are not able to absorb that kind of "shock, action" when they are young.  This article should enhance part of the American population because if parents were not letting their children play Call of Duty by the age of 12, children would not know what a firearm looks like.  In America, we have had incidents were some children accidentally shoot their parents or other due to the knowledge of a firearm.  However, if parents were more careful with what they let their children observe on TV such as movies. reality shows or even video games, children would not be capable of having any sort of knowledge for these weapons.
(All quotations from article Violent video games: the effects on youth, and public policy implications.)

Weinstein, Tarantino and the standoff over movie violence.

Harvey Weinstein is trying to discontinue his propaganda for violent movies.  He is trying to prove a point to where every child who watches a movie that contains any sort of violent acts would drive that child to do something stupid in his/her life.   In this article it explains how there are two groups: "1) Of course media violence is corrupting the minds of youth, coarsening society and leading to horrific levels of uncontrolled brutality and gun violence. 2) Violent media has been with us forever!"  Although, violence has been with us forever does not mean that people do not make poor actions.  The more violent scenes the more it sticks into children's head and they find themselves more motivated towards it.  From babysitting children, I have noticed that they're two kind of parents.  Ones that are totally okay to letting their children watch any type of violent scene, to the ones who do not want their children to encounter themselves with any kind of violent act, nor scene.  Children are more capable to use their imagination and imagination goes a long way.  Violence is not going anywhere, but what people can do is be a bit more like Harvey Weinstein and try to keep the violent scenes a bit low.  If this were to happen we might see change in the world.  Maybe not a lot of people would get arrested for illegal gun possession and all that non-sense.
(All quotations from article Weinstein, Tarantino and the standoff over movie violence.)

Columbine: Whose fault is it?

"It is sad to think that the first few people on earth needed no books, movies, games or music to inspire cold-blooded murder."  This articles expresses how Americans use criminals as heroes by putting their pictures "on the front of the new paper or the magazines."  This explains how we are so used to judging the book by its cover.  We think that people who listen to Heavy metal and different kind of music are weird or how "people tend to associate anyone who looks and behaves different with illegal or immoral activity."  Maybe how we try to find excuses for everyone.  How we blame others because the person who was in the wrong was not 18 yet, or how it was peer pressure.  We are so accustomed to finding excuses from each others actions that we do not realize that we blame people who are completely un guilty.  Maybe its time to stop judging other by what they look like, what they listen to, and who they act like and realize that we are all humans and we all make the same mistakes, some more than others but no one is perfect.  Instead of  blaming music, lyrics, artist, the news or any time of media, we should really think "Whose Fault is It?:
(All quotations from article Columbine: Whose fault is it?)