The hypothesis of Hopf et al. related to an effect hypothesis that watching violence in the media contributes to aggressive behavior and a selection hypothesis which states that violently aggressive actions stimulates exposure to violence (Hopf et al
According to one study of 11-year-old males, 20% of the subject population of whom the teachers rated as low achievers were later convicted of violent crime, compared to less than 10% of those rated as higher achievers. According to researchers, social situations within the school system, such as overcrowding, imposed conformity, and peer pressure all contribute to youth violence (Farrington, 1989)
According to McCord and his team of researchers, this access to unsupervised violent depictions can lead to cultural desensitization. This desensitization makes it difficult for a youth to learn right from wrong, and desensitizes him or her to violence, thus making a violent act far easier to commit (McCord, 1994)
Additionally, social institutions such as the family are generally prone to anti-social behavioral tendencies in lower income areas. These tendencies include drug or alcohol abuse, large, disassociated families, low parental education, and increased likelihood for sexual or verbal abuse (Office of Children, Youth and Family, 1999)
While the rate of crime and violence is on a general down trend, nationally, youth violence is rising consistently. According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, there was a 40% increase in violent crime, and over 25% of those crimes were committed by juveniles (Snyder, 1994)
After an attack on a homeless man in Milwaukee in 2006, a teenager involved in the attack told authorities that the violent attack was like playing a video game (Fantz). It is likely that these children are desensitized to the consequences of violence, because they have been socialized toward it at an early age by video games, violent television programs, and popular action movies (Moore 10)
In all the recent cases of children assaulting or murdering a homeless person, the children's uninformed views and narrow understanding of homelessness facilitated their callous actions. As described by Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, these are crimes of opportunity, crimes that likely would not have been committed if certain conditions didn't coincide, one significant condition being the identification of the victim as homeless (Weiner)
Rarely do the perpetrators act alone. Authorities describe this factor, under which most of these attacks are committed, as a group context (Zimring 489)
In the case violence in the media, the entertainment industry has billions of dollars of resources on its side to keep people from making what the industry would view as inconvenient conclusion. Similar to the tobacco industry that relies on the inability for the scientific community to prove cigarettes cause cancer (Cantor, 4), the entertainment industry relies on the inability to show that violence in the media causes youth violence, so it will not lose advertising revenue in violent programming aimed at children (Bushman and Anderson, 479)
A lot of it revealed that the participants learned that men should be fighters, macho, heroes to be desired by women from shows like Top Gun, G.I. Joe, and World Wrestling Federation (Kivel and Johnson, 2009)
Since children's media exposure is assumed to have affects over time, many years in fact, it is difficult to control for other factors such as family problems, drugs, previous aggression, etc. (Cantor, 4)