Making a Reasoned Judgement: Influence of Violent Movies

Media nowadays has a great effect on kids. It influences their way of seeing the world and interacting with it. Many movies, videogames and TV shows have been accused of influencing kids with extremely graphic visuals of violence, therefore suggesting the idea that murder, physical harassment and deadly attacks are an unavoidable issue on our society. However in order to relate them with this claims, there must be some kind of evidence review. In our thinking skills class we analyzed the case of two boys who had killed a fellow partner. Different sources argued about the role of the movie Childs Play 3.

After carefully going through corroborative, meaning in favor, and conflicted evidence, meaning against; as well as the weight and quality of each of the two sides, taking into account the credibility of each one of them; we arrived to the following conclusion:

Analyzing all evidence, strong and neutral sources have expressed their opinion and conduct research in this topic. We, finally, came across the conclusion that violent videos in the shape of either movies or series or whatever media graphic existing representation. Those videos result in a highly charged stimulation on kids who desire to copy what fascinates them on TV. These images present situations where violence is portrayed as a way of power or either punishment or enforcing justice for someone who did something wrong, as well as an accepted method to discharge stress or pain.

However, although these types of movies promote the idea of unmeasured violence, by looking back to the case and analyzing the claims as regards the kids´ background , we can state that the fact of growing in a conflicting environment leds to allow these movies to have a greater impact on kids. Due to the situations children must face every day, they tend to rationalize and normalize it. In this way, they lack the ability to distinguish what is wrong and what is not. Kids think that copying those scenes is acceptable as they have to face them every day. Therefore, movies only give them more extreme ideas to do, and helps neutralizing even more the idea of violent acts. Children may think if people in the movies and my parents are allowed to do this, why can´t I?

In conclusion, after analyzing the present evidence portrayed by unbiased organizations charged with high quality and great importance weight; in our personal opinion we have decided that violent movies do promote and encourage savage acts. However, their effect is deeply related with the way in which violence is presented at each kid´s home. Movies may suggest an idea, but it is a parents´ job to help kids be able to tell the difference between fiction and reality. So, both things need to be connected in order to result in a horrific and terrible situation.