Imagine this: A young, naïve twelve-year-old child brings a knife to school and shows it to another child. When asked why he did this, he replies that he saw it on his favorite television show as well as in his favorite video game.

Is this child accountable for his actions? Should he suffer the consequences associated with bringing a weapon to school?

Alternatively, is there someone or something else to blame?
The answer to questions that infer if a child’s behavior can be blamed on what he or she is being exposed to through media has been answered through several studies and researches.

Television, radio, Internet and video games constitute the primary forms of media that young people experience. These can be very strong sources of both inspiration and influence over people of all ages, but are especially important to young people.

Media is primarily for entertainment; however, media can become a problem when young people try to emulate what they see. Children are very impressionable, and they do not realize what they are doing is wrong until someone tells them it is.

Research by psychologists L. Rowell Huesmann, Leonard Eron and others starting in the 1980s found that children who watched many hours of violence on television when they were in elementary school tended to show higher levels of aggressive behavior when they became teenagers. This is because exposure to anything entails a reaction from the person observing it. Research from the National Biotechnology of Information has shown that exposure to violent media can desensitize the violence that occurs in the real world; ergo, people are more inclined to perform violent acts because they have seen it on television.

Video games have not only become more violent but the fact that they have become more realistic regarding the graphics, also makes them worse because it makes young people feel as though what they are doing in the game is occurring in real life. Julian Marcos, analyst of adolescent psychology and behavior, states that according to researchers, a whopping ninety-seven percent of adolescents age 12-17 play video games — on a computer, on consoles such as the Wii, Playstation and Xbox, or on portable devices such as Gameboys, Smartphones and tablets for at least an hour or more a day.

A 2010 review by psychologist Craig A. Anderson and others concluded that “the evidence strongly suggests that exposure to violent video games is a causal risk factor for increased aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, and aggressive affect and for decreased empathy and prosocial behavior.” Anderson’s earlier research showed that playing violent video games can increase a person’s aggressive thoughts, feelings and behavior both in laboratory settings and in daily life. “One major conclusion from this and other research on violent entertainment media is that content matters,” says Anderson.

A survey conducted by the Nielsen Company depicts that media access is most important to people twelve-to-seventeen years old, a whopping seventy-eight percent. They also conclude that the amount of time spent watching television has increased by thirty-eight percent, and video games by twenty-six percent.

Excessive access to internet and social media can also affect the behavior behind youth. Because Internet today is so easily accessible, it is losing its value due to misuse. In order for the internet to do the good it was originally created to do, people have to stop relying on it so much, using it as a crutch and, most importantly, stop taking it so literally because not everything in media is what it seems.

“There has definitely been a change in the mind-sets and behaviors of the kids today. Even going back five years, things were not as bad as they are now. I do blame television and media because it is giving these kids fake stuff and it fills their tiny minds with nonsense. At the rate these kids are going, it will only get worse, and frankly I am scared to witness the next generation” Miss Kelly McDonell, long-time security guard at Paint Branch High School expresses her take on teen media influence. She is one of the many adults who feel each generation has gotten worse due to what is being seen in the media.

Adolescence is a tender time and, if media does not change the messages it is sending to these extremely impressionable people, how can teens progress as a generation? How can we progress as a nation?