Can media violence desensitise you?
Is violent media affecting you or your children? Do graphic video games, music lyrics or news affect how you perceive or react to violence?
Dr Wayne Warburton, deputy director of the children and families research centre at Macquarie University, has sought answers to both of these questions.
He defines 'violent media' as "Any violence that we would describe as having the aim of bringing extreme harm to another person or killing them; any media that has depictions of people being hurt, killed, dismembered, maimed and so on."
Dr Warburton says the majority of studies conducted to date suggest exposure to violent media can affect how your brain responds to violence.
"In the short-term what they find is that there is extra activation in parts of the brain that prepare us to fight or fly, the emotion centres of the brain, the parts that detect threat and impel us to respond to an emergency," he said.
"There is reduced activation in the front part of the brain where we put the brakes on our behaviour, the part of our brain where we think through the consequences and we inhibit things that we should not do.
"For instance, if somebody calls you a name and your immediate response is to punch them in the face, the front part of the brain kicks in and says 'well, do you really want to go to jail?' so you kind of pull it back.
"When you are [exposed to] violent media, that part of the brain is less activated and the part of the brain that is impelling you to do something is more activated."
Dr Warburton says that one of the long-term effects of exposure to such material can be a de-sensitisation to violence.
"You get two groups of people - one of whom has had a lot of exposure to violent media, and [the other] have not had much exposure," he said.
"Then [when] they see something upsetting, the people who have had lots of exposure just do not have the same emotional response.
"The most recent study ... shows that not only do they not have an emotional response, but they actually turn off the emotion centres of the brain that would have the emotional response in order to kind of avoid, we assume, seeing something that is going to cause a big emotional response."
Dr Warburton says it is not as simple as completely disengaging from violent media material; it is more a matter of finding a balance.
"Media is like food, so you have to have regard [for] how much and the content and whether it is age appropriate and so on," he said.
"At the age of eight you do not have much knowledge about the world around you; you do not have very good abstract thinking.
"Developmentally speaking, you cannot think of many ways in which it is going to help an eight-year-old child, so you will be thinking more in terms of - if it is a small amount, it is not going to cause much harm.
"You cannot stop kids accessing it. If you have a tablet or a smart phone, 24 hours, seven days a week, wherever there is internet access, you can access it.
"I think the answer lies in creating a generation of kids who understand how media works and are willing to self-regulate with it ... so that their media diet is healthy.
"You can't say 'no you cannot do it', but you just try to keep it in that healthy range where it is not too much, where the content is varied and, of course, it is age appropriate."
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