Media Violence's Influence on Minors
In the late 90s, the Wall Street Journal published an article on the world-renown anime, Dragon Ball Z. The show was being framed as a violent cartoon show as Japanese parents grew concerned for their children’s altered behaviors. The anime is only one of many examples of media that puts media violence up on display for impressionable individuals like minors. Almost 30 years later, the negative influences of media violence targeting minors presents have evolved. According to the National Institute of Health, media violence is defined as the display of aggression or belligerence in one or across multiple platforms of media (NIH, 2006). Media violence will be able to negatively impact the psychological wellbeing of minors by inducing a series of aggression-related reactions. These phenomena can be explained through our different forms of media and violence, the psychological effects media violence has on minors, and differences in cultural opinion on media violence as a whole.
In the 21st century, it’s important to recognize the many forms of violence that can come about in minors today. We have many different forms of entertainment that are targeted towards children. Some of those that have become widely popular, especially in a global context, would be television, movies, the news, games, and the Internet. According to Dr. Bhavna Ramaiya, a professor at Sarojini Naidu Government Girls' Post Graduate College in India, these include physical, verbal, psychological, sexual, fantasy and realistic violence. They are often shown in the form of combat, gun violence, intimidating language, hate speech, controlling behavior, emotional manipulation, sexual harassment, coercion, and many other manners of violence. Ramaiya then goes on to use the social psychology theories such as the Social Learning Theory, Catharsis Theory, Desensitization Theory, Cultivation Theory, General Aggression model, and Priming Theory to explain how these forms of violence influence children’s behaviors. Each theory discusses the ideas of learning through mimicry, feeling a sense of relief through simulated violence, having a lessened emotional response to violence, allowing the media to mold the viewer's mind and cognitive processes, slowly adapting to developing violence, and integrating violence into a mindset (Ramaiya, 2024). In addition to the psychological aspect of this issue, at Effat University in Saudi Arabia, Shahad Aljeaid states that certain news outlets and TV shows tend to discuss serious topics such as terrorism and gender violence in a very repetitive and dramatized manner. Mere exposure to these platforms are enough to make a child grow apathetic to the real topic of violence (Aljeaid, 2024). This is seen particularly in media that seems to appeal to children. Some examples of brand names with this would be Japanese anime titles such as Tower of God and Jujustu Kaisen, cartoons like Family Guy or The Simpsons, web series like Red Vs. Blue or Happy Tree Friends, and video games including the likes of Mortal Kombat or Tekken.
What are experts talking about?
Across the world, researchers have come to a common conclusion that children, as well as the general population of minors, are negatively influenced by media violence. Shown through a descriptive study done by Dr. Sonia Riyat, a professor at Arka Jain University in Mohanpur, India, it was concluded that the children who were assigned to watch a violent cartoon ended up experiencing increased levels of aggression, diminished social interaction, shorter attention spans, desensitization to the violence, and greater emotional distance (Riyat, 2024). A CNN news article featuring insight from Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician at the Center for Child Health, Behavior, and Development, goes on to add that children who are shown media that are violent in nature are more prone to experiencing issues such as trouble sleeping, nightmares, and anxiety. Additionally, University of Ohio professor Brad Bushman notes that intense fear of violence is another negative effect media violence has on minors. It can pose a threat as it can increase and decrease the child’s response to the violence, whether it's being shown virtually or realistically. As more research is being done by Dr. Christakis and Professor Bushman, multiple media outlets have urged that the government should step in to improve their ratings of the media. In homes, it's advised that parents should show children media involving acts of kindness and benevolence, rather than violence (Howard, 2016).
The 2024 Discord Ban in Turkey: The Nightmare and the Aftermath
In our world, there are many places violence is shown, including the Internet. It's a place where people across the country, or even across the world, gain a platform for long distance communication. It's sometimes not always a good thing to let children have access to it, as it can become a gateway and a one way ticket to seeing people admitting that they committed heinous acts, such as murder. That's what took place in the country of Turkey, which led to the ban of the popular communication platform Discord, in October 2024. Turkish news outlets DuvaR English and Daily Sabah describe that it stemmed from the femicides, or murders, of 2 women, Ayşenur Halil and İkbal Uzuner, plotted by 19-year-old Semih Çelik, who would later take his own life on October 4th. Since he admitted to his crimes on Discord to a group of Turkish men who were against gender equality, the entire platform was examined by Turkish authorities up to the events leading to the ban.
According to a YouTube video, uploaded by Discord content creator No Text to Speech, the same group Çelik was part of, it's said that these men would entice and lure children with the hopes of exploiting them. Using data from a 2016 breach of Turkey's citizen ID portal, E-Devlet, private information was turned into merchandise overnight. Hackers who got their hands on the information were selling and threatening to expose minors with their information. Children were extorted to perform explicitly sexual acts for this group of people, now known by name as C31K or HAHA. During investigations into C31K under suspicion of sexual abuse and blackmailing, it was revealed in an X post by Turkey's Minister of Internal Affairs, Ali Yerlikaya, that one of the C31K server moderators was a child and still was taken into custody by Ankara Police, and following that arrest, another member was taken into custody by police in Istanbul Police, once again being identified as a minor. The Minister later wrote in his statement: "We do not have a single child, youth or person to lose because of poison dealers and perverted ideologies." This fragment of his post was powerful enough to evoke the message that it should be our mission to protect children from the abuse of these barbaric groups made to instill fear through bullying.
Conclusion
As media violence continues to spread, the negative impacts will cause children to have increased aggression if we continue to allow them to act on those violent thoughts. This phenomenon can be explained as we deepen our research on the modes of media and violence, find more about the effects this can have on the wellbeing of minors, and continue to examine events involving the protection of minors from real-life acts of violence. With this web article, I'm hoping to see changes in the near future where parents and guardians are showing minors media with positive messages, and the government monitors activity so that minors don't become victims of violence. Just like the Turkish Minister, I don't want what happened on October 4th to repeat itself again and hopefully children, as well as their families, could be sure that they're safe viewing the media.
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