Restricting Pornography in the UK and the Effect of Violent Media Content on Children

The proposed law has been criticised for being illiberal, impractical and unfeasible, but is supported by people with a religious agenda under the tired auspices of 'protecting the children'. The thing is, there is very little evidence that children need this much protection. Certainly violent media content can be damaging to certain individuals some of the time, but happy, healthy adolescents are not going to start killing prostitutes because you can do so on Grand Theft Auto, nor will they turn into sexual deviants because they've viewed pornography. A somewhat jocular analogy would be that of the fat kid. If you feed a fat kid fatty food, he's going to get fatter, but ice cream for dessert isn't going to destroy most children. Unfortunately, a lot of people, going along with the latest hip moral panic, will try to tell you that playing Manhunt is going to turn your child into a monster. This is simply not the case. And yet I'm still surprised when I encounter mature adults who still think that Jamie Bulger's killers watched 'Child's Play 3' and in a zombie like daze went out and committed murder. The proposed law on pornography here in the UK is ridiculous, and the way that it is being talked about by certain people shows a serious ignorance of the facts of media effects theory. BBC article - 'Internet porn block 'not possible' say ISPs' http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-... Safermedia (formerly known as mediamarch) http://www.mediamarch.org.uk/welcome.htm Open Rights Group - 'Default Censorship is a Poor and Ineffective Idea' http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2... BBFC entry on 'On Deadly Ground' http://www.bbfc.co.uk/BVF064852 BBC Article -- 'Musician 'had murderous thoughts'' http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/su... BBC Article -- 'Police Reject Game Link to Murder' http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/le... Asian Youth Murdered by a Psychotic Racist in British Young Offender's Institution http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/nov... BBC Article -- 'Robert Stewart's Path to Murder' http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4022807... Fatal Addiction: Ted Bundy's Final Interview http://www.pureintimacy.org/piArticle... Television Viewing and Aggressive Behaviour During Adolescence and Adulthood http://daphne.palomar.edu/pjacoby/Tel... Television Violence and Behavior: A Research Summary http://www.ericdigests.org/1994/telev... The Impact of Video Games on Children http://www.pamf.org/preteen/parents/v... The Effects of Violent Video Game Habits on Adolescent Hostility, Aggressive Behaviors, and School Performance (2nd link down) http://tinyurl.com/3ykgdus The Effects of Video Games on Children -- What Parents Need To Know http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi... A Meta-Analysis of the Published Research on the Effects of Pornography http://www.ccoso.org/library%20articl... Article by Miranda Suit for the MailOnline -- 'I know what internet porn does to children - and it terrifies me' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/art...