Are there important effects of children watching media violence?
The short answer is yes. A slightly longer answer is that there are multiple effects of consuming media violence that have been documented scientifically. There are many ways of summarizing the multiple effects, but one is that there are four major effects of media violence exposure. These are:The aggressor effect: Watching a lot of entertainment violence tends to predict increased aggressive thoughts, increased aggressive feelings, and increased aggressive behaviorsThe victim effect: Watching a lot of entertainment violence tends to predict increased fearfulness, increased beliefs about the likelihood that violence might occur, and increased self-protective behaviors.The bystander effect: Watching a lot of entertainment violence predicts increased desensitization, both to other media violence and also to aggression in the real worldThe appetite effect: Simply put, the more you watch, the more you want to watch.The scientific issue is not whether there are effects, but which of these e
