Violent films and video games really do numb the brains of teenagers, with repeated viewings making them less sensitive to aggression, according to a new study.
The researchers usedbrain scans to show how they become less emotionally responsive to violence the more they see.
They say it is among the first hard physiological evidence for the theory that on-screen violence leads to real-world aggression.
For years campaigners have argued that watching violent films and playing games like Grand Theft Auto , Mortal Kombat and Modern Warfare makes youngsters more prone to violence. In the Grand Theft Auto series, players become characters who win points for carjacking, killing prostitutes and running over pedestrians.
The problem of Violence on screen , plus a list of knownand innovative solutions.
http://www.ideaconnection.com/solutions/7296-Violence-on-screen.html

Very lite on actual data . . so IMHO not a very good study if your conclusion is that the actual content of TV is the problem itself. It may be, but this study does a poor job of making that case.

This is the overall conclusions. That correlations exist between television exposure and proclivity for aggression.

It could just as easily be the case that the greater time spent in front of a TV correlates to less positive role models interacting in the lives of the children.

ie, it may be more cogent to say that as parents reduce positive role building and social skill building activities an increase in unproductive anti social activities occurs, which increases violence due to a lack of social skills.

Social skills are in large part learning ways to deal with stressful situations without the need for violence.

These studies which attempt to show that depictions of violence desensitize the audience to real violence miss the mark of an strong conclusion for the very reason of ethics. We cannot test a persons response to real violence ethically. When a person knows something is "play acting" (as we tell the kids who see something scary on TV) it is easy to detach from the strong emotions of real violence.

So these conclusions are extremely weak for these reasons, a) becuase much better studies have shown that in the absence of TV kids tend to engage in social activities which build strong social coping skills, and b) becuase the conclusions of sensitization are poorly correlated to real violence when the study is unable to control for the suspension of disbelief.

The AMA did a study demonstrating that introducing TV to a culture will double the murder rate within 5 years. An 8 year old took 10 shots at his school- with 8 hit, three of them head shots, that is why the military is starting to use video game technology in training. Ref: Lt. Col Grossman, I think his website is called Killology.

Demonstrating is the wrong word. They found a correlation, very different. We need to make sure we understand the difference becuase the causes are not simple and linear, ie you are not going to find a single variable that makes all the difference.

But if you have an agenda to push then its handy to speak of it as a single cause, a cause that you are working against.

Any time someone wants to make it seem like a single thing is the cause of a complex social behaviors that should be a clue.

It could also be that naturally aggressive children gravitate towards violent entertainment.

Exactly, correlation is not causation. And when the topic is behavior it is an incredibly complex topic.

Just reeks of agenda when you see such a simplistic study done that does not even use technical language.