Electronic media: What are we teaching our children?

摘要

As the media industry has progressed in the 21st century, it has had a dynamic impact on our daily lives. Television, in particular, has altered our lives immensely. However, it is essential to highlight that along with its innumerable advantages, it has brought a very important yet obscure problem - the promotion of violence. The amount of violence shown on television is on the rise (Paquette, 2003). A number of content analyses conducted over the years indicate that the depiction of physical violence is widespread in mass media, for example in feature films, comics, animation series, television news, popular music and computer games. Compared to statistics about real-life incidents, violence is by far over-represented in various media products (Federman, 1998). The violence we witness today in our own country, or for that matter anywhere in the world, is perhaps to some extent a product of the violence that has gradually been impregnated in each one of us through the media.