‘Youth, violence and the new media’: some difficulties protecting children and adolescents from social communications within modern society

Culture criticism is as old as our culture. The development of each new medium was followed by the suspicion of a loss of sense and warnings of an endangering of the morals. Political interests always tried to steer the media traffic under appeal on "values." This is true to Plato's attacks on the poets, for the warning before novel reading in the eighteenth century, for the press and post censorship in the nineteenth, for the scepticism about the television in the twentieth and for the apocalyptic visions of the power of the new media in the twentyfirst century. The debate about violence in the new media is concerned above all about violent videos and computer games. Again and again questions like these are asked: If the consumer's optics becomes increasingly that of the media, does reality not approach simulation? Do representations of violence stimulate imitation? Do they serve to purge aggressions or do they serve to arouse critical consciousness? What is in the end the fertile soil for violence and violent behaviors? Does the social acceptance of violence change? What is the co-responsibility of the media and media producers? I shall try to answer some of these questions by illustrating results of the Italian research group.