By Sreya R. Nair and Karishma Ravi

Whenever you wish to hear a song, watch your favorite shows, or want to know the current affairs, you just turn on your television, mobile phones or laptops – which all comes under the term ‘Mass Media’. Mass media always intends to reach a mass audience. The revolution in the development of mass media is one of the most notable change in the 20^th century. Social medias have accumulated a central role in our daily lives, our values, beliefs, and behaviors. But, one of the major threat social media pose to humanity is the increase in real world violence and aggression..

When a child is growing up in an environment filled with violence, it always sets a long-term impact on the mind of the child and increases the risk of violent behavior. Similarly, research evidences accumulated over many years show that exposure to violence in films and video games can also increase the risk of violent behavior on children as well as adults. Children are the prime victim of this issue. Most youth who are aggressive or antisocial in some forms may not have been violent as kids or teens. But researches show that aggressive children are likely to grow up to be aggressive adults. Thus, exposure of children to media violence can ultimately lead to violent behavior many years later. 

In earlier days media violence was portrayed like- how human behavior causes sufferings, losses and sadness to himself as the real costs and consequences of violence. Hence the mature adolescent viewers were able to learn the danger and harm of violence by virtually experiencing its outcome. But entertainments now-a-days uses immediate thrills without any human costs. And now the visuals are also more violent and violence is portrayed more realistically. Sexual and comic violence are most dangerous because they associate positive feelings with hurting others.

Showing violent behaviors, prevalence of violence in the world and perception of world as a dangerous place incorporates the fear of being the victim in the mind of the spectators. They start to carry weapon, initially, for self-protection but gradually, they become more aggressive and think more like- “get them before they get me”. Any sort of exposure to media violence can lead to anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, sleep disturbance or nightmares and social isolation.

Internet and video games have even greater potential to increase aggressive behavior in people. In the case of video games, the child is completely engrossed into the game and use of joystick enhances the experience and the aggressive feelings. It is very true that children learn best by observing and trying it. Violent media teaches specific violent behaviors at specific circumstances, so children learn this and it gets saved in their memory bank. Rather than playing the role of a mere spectator in television or in video games, the player becomes the script writer.

Although exposure to media violence is not the sole factor contributing to aggression, antisocial attitudes, and violence among children and adolescents, it is an important health risk factor on which immediate action is required. We cannot prevent media from creating such videos hence what should be done to prevent this should be done by us as parents, psychiatrists, brothers and sisters etc.