Khadijah

Toure Instructor: Malcolm Campbell English 1103 2/4/2012

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Topic Proposal: Does media violence correlate directly with youth violence? Introduction/Overview I will be investigating why social media directly correlates to the rate of violence amongst student in public schools. I want to know how much of the violence in schools is somehow related to social media and websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Id like to know just how much of an impact social media has on violence taking place in todays youth. Coming from a person whos been a faithful Facebook and Twitter user for over a year, I have witnessed some violence in schools stemmed from these social networks, but Id like to know just how big of a role Facebook and Twitter plays in these type of situations. Students will lash out on each other because of something that was said or read on Facebook or Twitter. During the last five years, the number of adolescents involved with social websites

has increased remarkably. According to a recent poll, 22% of teenagers log onto their favorite social networks more than 10 times a day. 75% of teenagers own cell phones and more than 25% of those teenagers use their cells to log onto social media sites more than once a day. As of December 2011, there are more than 845 million subscribers to Facebooki and more than 100 million people with Twitter accounts. People are making connections

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with each other through the web every second. Networks like Facebook and Twitter are the perfect sites for students to connect with their classmates and communicate with each other outside of school. Networks like these can also harbor some negative qualities, which include exposure to inappropriate content, peer pressure, and cyber aggression. All of my research was done online. I looked at some scholarly articles found

through our schools database and I searched for some scholarly articles through Google. I also looked at some website articles about violence in schools that involved Facebook. I looked for scholarly articles that were about the impact of social media on youth violence in public schools. I spoke to a couple of my friends on their opinions about whether or not social media played a role on youth violence in general. Some researchers argue that media violence is not to blame for youth because while

media violence is increasing, youth violence is decreasing. However, some researchers are convinced that youth violence is directly correlated to media violence. The organizations arguing this case include the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatry Association, and the American Psychological Association. In 2001, the Surgeon General reported that the upsurge in youth violence was largely held to the fact that a lot of guns and drugs were being used by the youth. Organizations arguing against this case include Motion Pictures Producers Association and Entertainment Software Association. Popular publications that hold these arguments include research articles such as Electronic Media and Youth Violence: A CDC Issue Brief for Educators and Caregivers and The Influence on Media Violence in Youth.

 Initial Inquiry Question(s)

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Im interested in whether or not media violence plays a significant role in youth

violence because I see youth violence but I wonder whether or not it has to do with the environment that some youth are raised in along with some temperamental issues rather than media violence. Can we really say that social media is to blame for youth violence? If so, dont the people who are in charge of what we see on TV and on the internet care enough to do something about it rather than increase the amount of artificial violence that we see in the media? I know that some people admire what they see their superstars act out in movies and TV shows, but weve all been raised to know that for illegal actions there are consequences. No matter how the consequences may come, we will face them. I hope to learn what is really the hype behind the social media and its correlation to youth violence. Next Steps To find out more information on this topic, I will make great use of our librarys

database system. I will focus a lot of my attention on scholarly articles and research. I will also pay close attention to newspaper articles and stories regarding youth violence and see whether or not the violence stemmed from something in the media or from other factors. I will also speak to more of my peers so that I can get an idea of what the publics view on this issue is. i http://newsroom.fb.com/content/default.aspx?NewsAreaId=22