5 Things You Can Do To Reduce The Impact Of Violent Media On Children

[Bello Olalekan]

Many movies, video games, online media and cartoons feature characters using guns. What impact can these movies have on the attitude of your child to violence and the use of weapons? A new study reported that children exposed to movies containing guns are likely to become more aggressive and pull the trigger, if given the opportunity.

This was the finding of a study titled Effects of Exposure to Gun Violence in Movies on Children’s Interest in Real Guns, published September, 2017 in JAMA Pediatrics.

In other to find out if watching a seeing a movie featuring guns could elicit interests in real guns, the researchers conducted an experiment involving 52 pairs of children that were randomly assigned to two groups. While one group saw a 20-minute edited version of the PG-rated films “The Rocketeer” or “National Treasure” that contained guns, the other group watched the same movies without scenes showing guns.

When the kids were left to play unsupervised in a room containing a real but disabled gun, those that watched the movie with scenes containing guns pulled the triggers more often than those in the other group. Interestingly, they also spent more time holding the gun and were more likely to play aggressively or fire at people.

Does this study prove that watching violence makes a person violent? Not really. Several factors including personality, mental well-being, and use of hard drugs also contribute to violent behaviour. Nevertheless, this study adds to the growing evidence linking violent media, which is increasingly pervasive, with violent behaviour in children.

In recent times, there have been reports of children accidentally shooting others. For instance, in 2015, a 2-year-old shot herself with a 20-gauge shotgun she found on a table. Two months later, one 12 year old boy shot his 9-year-old brother. In another related incident, a 5 year old found her grandmother’s gun under the pillow and shot herself in the neck. These rise in the incidents of gun related violence is a source of concerns to many parents.

Could exposure to gun violence in movies and other forms of media have contributed to these incidents? We don’t know. Nevertheless, violent media has become pervasive in today’s world and experts have suggested that this have an impact on how people feel about using it to resolve issues For instance, these movies ‘normalize’ violent behaviour which could make it more difficult for people to exercise restraint in the use of violence.

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Thank God technology is always there to support us during our desperate moments. Nowadays, there are several applications like Screen time, Parent kit and Time Away which parents can use to control what their kids watch while they are away. all parents need to so is to pay for their subscription fees and take charge of the content kids engage on.