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Annie Bushman
Salena Davis
Levi Hawes
Makayla Smith
Carol Sieverts
English 2010
15 October 2014
Media Doesnt Make Murderers
In recent years there have been many instances of crimes across our nation ranging
from simple store robberies to mass shootings. Many people in our society believe that it
directly relates to the type of media that we indulge in regularly. Some attribute it to the
amount of violent video games such as Halo and Grand Theft Auto (Nauert) that our
adolescents spend time playing and others think it has a direct relation to the violence depicted
in movies and television programs. However, many studies have proven that these crimes are
not directly related to the different types of entertainment that we
participate in. How many of us watch or play violent media on an almost
daily basis and do not show signs of violent or criminal behavior? In fact
the exact reason behind this behavior may still be a mystery among
psychologists.
In a recent study published in the Journal of Youth and

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Adolescence, Doctor Christopher Ferguson, associate professor of psychology and criminal

justice at Texas A&M, and his fellow researchers found that the playing of video games had a
very slight calming effect on youths with attention deficit symptoms and that it helped to
reduce aggressive and bullying behavior. Ferguson studied over 300 children around the age of
13 from various ethnic groups and found similar results among the vast majority. (Nauert) This
is an important study considering the ongoing debate about this very sensitive subject, even
more so since he conducted the study on those who had preexisting mental health problems.
In an interview conducted by the Psychiatric Times, psychologist Craig Anderson, PhD,
Director of the Center for the Study of Violence at Iowa State University, said there is growing
evidence that high exposure to fast-paced violent games can lead to changes in brain function
when processing violent images, including dampening of emotional
responses to violence and decreases in certain types of executive
control. He later went on to say media violence is only one of many
risk factors for later aggressive and violent behavior. Furthermore,
extremely violent behavior never occurs when there is only one risk
factor present. Thus, a healthy, well-adjusted person with few risk
factors is not going to become a school-shooter just because they start
playing a lot of violent video games or watching a lot of violent movies.
(qtd. in Kaplan)
Although there is no concrete scientific proof that violence entirely affects our ability to
refrain from violent acts, it is obvious that it does disturb our psychological health, even in a

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small way. There is an idea that exposure to violent

images could be on par with the correlation of
exposure to secondhand smoke and the risk of lung
cancer, write Vasilis K. Pozios, Praveen R. Kambam and
H. Eric Bender who are forensic psychiatrists and the founders of the consulting group
Broadcast Thought, saying that small amounts over a long period of time may have a slight
impact on our mental health. (Pozios)
In other studies published between 1957 and 1990, the psychologists George Comstock
and Haejung Paik found that the short-term effect of exposure to media violence on actual
physical violence against a person was moderate to large in strength. Mr. Comstock and Ms.
Paik also conducted an analysis of studies that juxtaposed the habitual viewing of violent media
and aggressive behavior at a certain point in time. They found 200 studies showing a moderate,
positive relationship between watching television violence and physical aggression against
another person. (Pozios)
In a Connecticut school shooting, 20 year old Adam Lanza shot and killed over 20 people
including children between the ages of 6 and 7. Many who knew him, said that he was a
generally shut in kind of person who spent most of his time playing military shooter video
games as reported by Susan Candiotti, Greg Botelho and Tom Watkins of CNN. As many as five
search warrants were issued to investigate Lanzas home following the shooting. Police
encountered such video games as Call of Duty and books such as "NRA Guide to the Basics of
Pistol Shooting". (Candiotti)

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However Lanza was known to have a form of Autism called Asperger's syndrome that
may have attributed to the mentality behind the shooting (Candiotti). Doctor Christopher
Ferguson commented that it wasnt a surprise that Lanza owned such entertainment seeing as
how Statistically speaking, it would actually be more unusual if a youth delinquent or shooter
did not play violent video games, given that the majority of youth and young men play such
games at least occasionally. (Nauert). Therefore there is no sure way of knowing whether or
not the video games had a direct relation to the actions of Lanza.
Although there have been many recent instances of violence being directly related to
media, such as this example of Adam Lanza and also the infamous Colorado shooting during the
premiere of the popular movie The Dark Knight Rises, statistics show that the number of violent
crimes has been decreasing, despite the ever increasing amount of violence that is depicted in
our entertainment. According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, the overall rate of violent
victimization in crimes like rape and assault has actually decreased by 40% from 2001 to 2010.
In the same sense the murder rates in the US have dropped by almost half from 9.8 per 100,000
people in 1991 to 5.0 in 2009 (Kaplan). Regardless, the Propaganda makes people feel that
crime is everywhere and that guns are needed for protection, says Emanuel Tanay, MD, a
retired Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Wayne State University and a forensic psychiatrist for
more than 50 years (Kaplan).
Gene Beresin, MD, director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Residency Training at
Massachusetts General Hospital and Steve Schlozman, MD, director of the MGH Center for
Mental Health and Media wrote an article showcasing the ways that parents greatly influence

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the way that their children will process and react to such forms of violence depicted in the
movies and video games that they play. They say The assertion that violent video games and
movies cause violent behavior has not been
demonstrated by scientific research. Youth who
have aggressive traits and are stressed are more
prone to delinquent and bullying behavior, and are
also drawn to these games, but their behavior in
real life is not predicted by playing the games. All
youth are protected from violence in the world by
close, supportive relationships with parents and peers. Children, whose parents have an active
role in filtering and knowing what their children watch and play, are less likely to be drastically
affected by the ever growing simulation of violence found in our daily diversions. Beresin
finishes by saying, There are a small percentage of youth, perhaps 5% who are at risk of
engaging in violent behavior. (Beresin). It is the responsibility of parents and guardians of our
children and adolescents to establish sound and supportive relationships with family and peers
to be protective against violent behavior. (qtd in Beresin)
As technological advances in the world of video games and movies continue, it is no
surprise that the violence imitated in these forms of diversion is more realistic now than it ever
has been. It is a common misconception that violent games and movies cause so many of the
criminal acts that we see today in the news media. However, there are millions of us who watch
and play such games and movies and have no motivation to commit such acts. The statistics

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prove that it is a very minor group of our society that is affected in a mentally damaging way by
societys forms of violent entertainment.

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Works Cited
Beresin, Gene and Schlozman, Steve. Research Shows Violent Media Do Not Cause Violent
Behavior. Web. 26 December, 2012
Candiotti, Susan, Botelho, Greg and Watkins, Tom. Newtown Shooting Details Revealed in
Newly Released Documents. Web. 29 March, 2013
Kaplan, Arline. Violence in the Media: What Effects on Behavior? Web. 05 October, 2012.
Nauert, Rick. In New Study, Video Games Not Tied to Violence in High-Risk Youth. Web. 27
August, 2013.
Pozios, Vasilis K, Kambam, Praveen R, and Bender, H. Eric. Does Media Violence Lead to the Real
Thing. Web. 23 August, 2013.