Cause And Effect Of Media Violence Philosophy Essay

It is evident that media violence is one of the many factors of why children are violent. There are many studies that show both sides of the argument for example Professor L. Rowell Huesmann, argues that fifty five years of studies show “that exposure to media violence causes children to behave more aggressively and affects them as adults years later.” Others, like Jonathan Freedman believes that “the scientific evidence simply does not show that watching violence either produces violence in people, or desensitizes them to it”. In 1956, researchers compared the behavior of twenty-four children after watching TV. Twelve of them watched a violent episode of Woody the Wood pecker and the rest watched a cartoon of Little Red Hen. They put the kids inside a room to play and the kids who watched the violent show, showed more aggression to other children. In 1963 Bandura preformed a similar experiment. They got one hundred preschool kids and divided them into four groups. First group they showed them a real person hitting an inflatable doll with a hammer. The second group watched the video of a kid hitting the doll. The third group watched a cartoon version of it, and the fourth group watched nothing. After they put the kids one by one into a play room with lots of toys and a blown up doll and observed what the kids did. The first three groups of children responded aggressively towards the doll while the group that watched nothing was not violent towards the doll. There have also been surveys that have shown that kids who watch violent shows are more aggressive in the real world. Scientist studies conducted in, Netherlands, Poland, Finland, Israel, Australia, and the United States. Report that the violent children watch violent programs most of the time, believe that the shows portray life just as it is, and identify themselves with the strongest most aggressive characters in the shows.

PROs

What the kids see happen in their families attributes more to how violent they are than watching TV.

47 % of parents with children have said that the kids imitated aggressive behaviors from TV.  On the other hand, 87% of children imitated positive behaviors.

The affects of violence are short termed violence

CONs

Children who see a lot media violence are more likely to be aggressive

Children who watch violence on TV have higher risk of being aggressive as adults

Media violence kindles fear in some children such as:

being victimized by crime

believe that their neighborhoods are unsafe

assume the crime rate is increasing, even when it is not

believe that the world is more dangerous than what it really is

Animal testing

Animal testing is a very controversial subject that starts debates among scientists, government officials and citizens. Scientists do research on animal to create medical treatments, make sure the drugs are safe, and test the quality and safety of a product like cleaning supplies, perfumes and cosmetics. Animals are used for research because they are very similar to humans. By studying how the animal reacts the product scientist can predict how humans will react to the same product. The most common animals used in animal testing are rats, mice and birds. Scientist exclaim that animal testing saves human and animal lives, while others say that killing any animal is ethically unacceptable. Other arguments believe that because the animals were taken from their natural habitats, the animals display more stress which could affect accuracy of the tests. But the people that do believe animal testing should happen show the breakthroughs that have come from the research. Like open-heart surgery techniques and organ transplants, insulin shots, cancer treatments, and vaccines for deadly diseases like polio, rabies, rubella, and tuberculosis. There are also many laws and regulations to insure that the animals are been treated as humanly as possible. Animal testing is the most accurate way to learn about the effects on the human body. Can you even imagine if they used humans and they died? Research would be no where because we wouldn’t be able to test things of the fear of humans dying. If we used computer models we wouldn’t be able to predict the unknown characters. Even though animals don’t have the same structure as humans, they are close enough to tell whether it would be harmful to humans.

PROs

It also benefits the lives of animals like the heartworm medicine that has saved many dogs.

Products can be tested to see how harmful they are

Make huge medical advances

CONs

Animal deaths through research

Animals are still different than humans

Animals do not give their consent. Do we really have the right to test on them ?

Much of the testing done is just for trivial things like shampoo or make-up

Alcoholism

For many years Alcoholism has been know as a chronic and even fatal disease. The definition of alcoholism is “a mental obsession that causes a physical compulsion to drink”. A mental obsession is a thought process of witch you have no control over. It’s almost as if you had a song stock in your head and there is no way of stopping it. When an alcoholic drinks the only way of stopping that though process is by taking another drink, the only difference is that you can hear the song playing in your head, but the problem is that the alcoholic’s obsession is a lot more dangerous because the thing is that he might not even know it is there. All he really knows is that he suddenly has an urge to drink. The risky thing about the decease is that it progresses over time. At first taking one to three drinks is all it takes to stop the thoughts from happing in your head. But later it takes six and later it takes up to twelve drinks to stop the thoughts in your head. Until you get to the point where the only time the thoughts stop is when you actually pass out. The thing with an alcoholic is that it takes a very long period of time for it to progress that even the alcoholics fails to notice that he has lost control. One of the most common symptom of the disease is denial. The only way of curing alcoholism is by getting help. Witch for most is the hardest thing to do.

Should the drinking age be lowered?

People who want the drinking age to be lowered from 21 argue that even with the law in place it has not stopped kids from drinking. On the contrary it has pushed kids to binge drink in unsafe environments. People that don’t want to lower the drinking age argue that teenagers are not mature enough to handle alcohol responsibly making them more susceptible to harm them self and even kill someone else.

PROs

When kids are not taught to drink they end up binge drinking

Even though they raise the age to 21, its rate of traffic fatalities decreased less than that of European countries

Lowering the drinking age will make alcohol less of a taboo

Not letting kids drink in public locations forces them to drink in unsafe areas

CONs

States that lowered the drinking age to experienced an increase DUI crashes among the 18 year olds

Raising the age to 21 has decrease crashes by 13%

Alcohol can make them do drugs have unplanned and unprotected sex, have depression, and do violence

Nature versus nurture

You got your nose from your father and your hair from your mother. But where did you get your personality from. One of the most controversial questions is if you are a product of your environment or a product of your genes? It is easy to see that your fiscal traits come from heredity; it is very hard to detrain when it comes down to a person’s personality, intelligence, and behavior. Is it nurture or nature? Some scientists believe that people behave as they do because of their animal instincts. This has come be known as the nature theory of human behavior. Other scientists think that people behave in certain ways because they were taught to behave in that certain way. This has been known as the nurture theory of human behavior. Now there is another group of scientist that has come to the understanding that both sides to that argument are partially right. Nature provides us with natural abilities and traits while nurture takes those traits and shapes them as society wants us to behave. Sir Francis Galton studied the roles of genes in intelligence hundreds of years ago. He speculated that parents gave intelligence to their children, who then passed the genes down to their offspring. To test these ideas he used a method that we still use today. This method was twin studies. Not only did they look alike identical twins had the exact same genes. Scientist now look at the difference between them because they both grow up in the same environmental factors.

Nature

If the environment did not play a big part in shaping an individual’s traits and behaviors, then identical twins should, be exactly the same

A kid’s intelligence is shaped by experiences over time. 

You are born with animal instincts to survive

Nurture

 Many research studies show the links between parents who are involved and young kid’s intelligence. 

Nurturing has a deep effect on intelligence

people, objects, and events influence

Drug legalization

Another one of those very touchy subjects is drug legalization. There are people from both sides that are for and against drug legalization. The truth is that drug legalization could potentially reduce government costs by bringing in more tax revenue and in the long run could lower its national deficit. Not only that but also they would end the costly drug war. Economists estimate that legalizing drugs “would save the government approximately $41.3 billion annually on expenditures related to the enforcement of prohibition.” Drug legalization would bring in “$46.7 billion annually”. Marijuana is already the nation’s number one cash crop, over passing the sales of corn and wheat. With this said California already has a major problem with people growing and selling weed. According to research California already has $15-billion worth of marijuana sold illegally every year. But opponents against it worry about the health conditions marijuana could do to a person’s body, because the truth is that marijuana affects the heart, brain, lungs, depresses the immune system and sexual organs. The effects on the brain are the weakening of the senses, confused judgment, and decreased motor skills. like drinking alcohol driving and operating machinery become extremely dangerous. It is also bad for the hart because it gives you a heart rate and high blood pressure. You can also develop respiratory problems like laryngitis, and bronchitis. Marijuana has also been known to give lung, head, and neck cancers which are incurable. It also reduces the T-cells in your immune system which fight off infections, just like having HIV. In teenagers, marijuana causes you to have a slow development growth. A side affect of marijuana is decreased fertility, breast enlargement in males, and breast milk production. For the most part marijuana is usually smoked for its emotional effects. After a few minutes of smoking you have a heightened feeling with a sense relaxation. But as you do it more often you have start losing your short-term memory, you have shortened attention span, social withdrawal, and less motivation to do your work.

PROs

Lower taxes

More money for public utilities, education, transportation

Americans are no longer labeled a “criminal”.

Thousands of new jobs created in the hemp industry

CONs

Law enforcement agencies will lose large chunks of funding

People will get into harder stronger drugs

They wouldn’t know how to test if you are driving under the influence of marijuana