Media Violence

The great Greek Philosopher and mathematician Plato once complained about the effects of plays on youth. Since time immemorial the effect of plays, dramas and cinema cannot be completely ruled out inducing violence into the youth’s mind. A cinema without violence is a complete” NO” in the west as well as in the east. Till the late 60s there was no one suspecting the media for the violence in the society. Only after television became popular, “Social Learning Theory” developed by Albert Bandura got its root and the public along with the psychologists understood the link between Violence in the society and the Media.
Consumption of violent media and aggressive behavior has causal relationship. Though it has its own limitations and criticism, it’s evident in several experiments that at least the kids, children and the adults alike at least experiment in real life what they see in a video game or a movie. They may inherit that depending on the result of the experiment.
Across the world, there are no standardized, reliable and valid measures of aggression and media violence exposure. Still the US and European countries have come up with some standards which may be used as a bench mark across the world. Motion picture rating system is widely used across the developed world. In our country, in the name of censor board, more and more porn and blood is blatantly exhibited across the country. Unlike the west, our movies are rated merely by a group of old men, who neither understand human psychology nor the society. If you are close to a political party, your ticket to the Censor Board is assured.
Organizations that create and sell video games spend millions of dollars to defuse the negative publicity for their industry. It is quite normal for all those who make money to safeguard ones industry so that they their profits do not dip. It is the government which should take cognizant of the facts and regulate the contents in the graphics, video games, movies T.V., shows etc.

All over the world, since 1950s the rise in violence in the media is very well noted by the researchers. Though there are challenges to establish the correlation between media violence and rise in crime in the society. Also statistics say that only 13% of the TV shows are non-violent crimes, the rest 87% are violent crimes. This contrasts with the real-world crime data where it’s vice versa.
Though there are several theories and explanations surrounding the violence in media, one cannot disagree the influence media can bring in the society especially the violent section of the society.