Report of the Media Violence Commission.

Aggression appointed a special commission to prepare a report on media violence. Their charge was as follows: " The ISRA Violent Media Effects Commission is charged with the task of producing a public statement on the known effects of exposure to media violence, based on the current state of scientific knowledge. If the Commission finds sufficient evidence of harmful effects, then the Commission's public statement may include public policy recommendations, keeping in mind that effective policies may well differ across countries because of their different legal and cultural traditions and systems. The statement could be an original statement by the Commission, or could be an endorsement or modification of one or more similar statements offered in recent years by other major scientific bodies and/or groups of scientists who have appropriate expertise in the media violence domain. The statement (if sufficiently brief) or an Executive Summary statement (of a longer, more detailed statement) will be published in ISRA's journal Aggressive Behavior and will appear on the ISRA web site. It may also be published in the ISRA Bulletin. " What follows is the final report of the Media Violence Commission, delivered in May, 2012. This statement was written by a group of internationally recognized active researchers in the field of media violence to summarize current knowledge about the strength of the link between violent media use and aggression, explain the psychological processes by which violent media may increase the risk of aggressive behavior, and offer practical advice on how parents and policy makers can deal with the issue. The media landscape is ever changing, with new technologies resulting in greater interactivity on smaller, graphically superior, and computationally more powerful devices. These new technologies are tremendous resources for learning and knowledge acquisition at a rate unparalleled in the past. Unlike traditional media (such as broadcast TV), these new technologies, in combination with an Internet connection, give children and adolescents new ways of playing games as well as access to more diverse forms of visually stimulating content than ever before (Donnerstein, 2011). Access to such content has many benefits, but it also carries risks. Youth can now download, view, play, and listen to violent material any time of day or night, often from the privacy of their own rooms, and with little supervision from their parents. With new technologies, the opportunities for viewing violent content, which was once relegated to more public spaces …