The media often focusus on video games, violent movies and tv

[Jo]

as the possible reasons that younger people seem desensitized to violence and are becoming more violent. But is it possible the media is just as responsible with the 24/7 coverage of tragic and violent events? Do people get to a point they just have to feel less because it is so overwhelming?

[Kristen]

I don't know. How's that for a delightfully conversation-inspiring post?? :p

I do think the media sensationalizes stuff, and not just tragic and violent events.
and I think the media sensation makes us feel more in danger than we need to(like in the case of child abductions).

It would be difficult to say where to draw the line, though.

[Jejune]

I don't know. How's that for a delightfully conversation-inspiring post?? :p

I do think the media sensationalizes stuff, and not just tragic and violent events.
and I think the media sensation makes us feel more in danger than we need to(like in the case of child abductions).

It would be difficult to say where to draw the line, though.

I agree, although I think "the media" is too broad a term. Certainly local television news is very guilty of doing almost nothing BUT sensationalizing the worst of local news, but I think that many venues are, or try to be responsible. Right now, I think many people are seeking news of Virginia Tech, and I don't think it's inherently irresponsible to report on it. News magazines are a mixed lot (I will be SO glad when my Newsweek subscription runs out) but I think that many newspapers do make the attempt to report fairly and I think there are TV stations in which the national news is reported on well and fairly. I love listening to the many news shows on NPR, because I almost never hear celebrity news, and I hear a lot of international news and a lot of perspective on the media.

The media is a big group of entities, and while the news in general trends toward sensationalism, I'm not quite ready to throw in the towel on them. I will, however, keep reading books about media trends and listening to shows like, well, "On the Media", in order to try to filter out what is going on.

[Lori]

I'm not sure young people are becoming more violent. Right now, in the last few years, violent crime is on the rise. But, it was falling from about the mid-1990s until it started to rise again several years ago. So I'm not sure that we can say the media has much if anything to do with it.

And I don't even think it's necessarily the fault of the media that we have to become desensitized. I think we have to become desensitized simply because of the amount of information available to us. Whether we get it from the most sedate, non-sensationalistic sources or the most outlandishly sensational ones, I'm not sure we have the emotional capacity to truly process the things we know.

I think about things like the 10,000+ children who die of starvation every single day. On an intellectual level, it horrifies me. But, emotionally, I think I have to be desensitized to it. Otherwise, I couldn't function. The enormity of that kind of tragedy would be so entirely emotionally devastating that I'd be in mourning every single day, and wouldn't be able to do the things I need to do. And you add in the people killed in wars and dying of preventable diseases and the victims of violent crimes, and I do think that, if any of us weren't desensitized to it, we'd probably have to be institutionalized, because we'd just entirely break down. I'm not sure anyone has the emotional resources to deal with that sort of information without becoming desensitized to some extent.

I know that I read a headline that says that 180 people were killed on Wednesday in car bombings in Iraq, and I don't feel what I should be feeling. I'm not sure anyone does. You just can't. You can't truly acknowledge the enormity of that kind of loss and then go on about your day. I think you have to be somehow emotionally hardened to it, just to live in an age with so much information so freely available.

Which I don't think answers the original question. I guess the concern I mainly have for kids is that they aren't desensitized to these kinds of things yet, not that they are. I think that when young children, who haven't yet developed whatever capacity we have as adults to learn of these sorts of tragedies on a daily basis and yet not let is overwhelm us emotionally, are exposed to this kind of information, it can be very devastating for them. I think it's a fine line to walk, between keeping children from information they should have and protecting them from information they aren't yet developmentally capable of processing, but I can't say I blame the media for it. Or parents, or anyone, really. I don't think there's evidence to show that that exposure makes them violent, but I do think that it probably has emotional and developmental effects that are less than ideal.

[Desirae]

I think putting the blame on movies and video games is crap quite honestly. These kids are sick in the head and THEN cleave to a movie. It's not the movie that is making them have these thoughts and move forward with them. They'd be doing this no matter what. The pics just wouldn't match up. ;)
That happens everyday with normal things. A girl sees a love story in a movie and decides that is JUST how she wants her relationship to be and tried to play it out that way.... or a song, a book, whatever.

I do think the media sensationalizes stuff, and not just tragic and violent events.
and I think the media sensation makes us feel more in danger than we need to(like in the case of child abductions).

It would be difficult to say where to draw the line, though.

I agree with you there Kristen.
The media plays on what will make a good story. If saying that children are worse off if they're in daycare, even if it's not the whole story, brings in people then that is what they'll air. People are in an uproar over them showing the videos and pics from VTech but their ratings were up over 26% that night from the average of the past 3 weeks. ;)