Does media violence promote violence in young people? This issue was debated between two parties; L. Rowell Huesmann and Jessica Moise authors of "Media Violence: Demonstrated Public Health Threat to Children. The second article debated was Jonathan L. Freedmans, author of "Violence in the Mass Media and Violence in Society. Both articles published by Harvard Mental Health Letter, vol.12, no.12 (June 1996). In the Huesmann Moise article basically supports the fact that yes media does in fact produce violent behavior in young children. They back their thoughts with a few examples from more than 100 studies over the last 40 years around the world. Subsequently only a few of the studies are discussed in the article. In the Freedman article, his thoughts are basically against the notion that mass media has no influence in a young persons behavior. He supports he theories and thoughts with seemingly strong evidence. The experiments lack actual studies, small numbers of children, and inappropriate statistics. Violence in the media in very predominant and should be controlled via TV. ratings, FCC regulations, and parental discipline involving improper television viewing habits.
Freedmans accusations sound strong and make sense when there presented to you in the format given. Moreover, minimal studies actually performed are few and lack actual participants thus creating the outcome to be weak with weak results. It's hard to take Freedmans side because of the influence I have see with young people around me, people I hung around or know. Freedmans discusses the fact that studies are weak, for example the Lynette Friedrichs and Aletha Stein published study found that children who watched violent programs became more aggressive, which in fact the authors found that little to no effect on physical aggression, verbal aggression, aggressive fantasy, or object aggression. Then they computed index statistics and still finding nothing.
