Gap in Parental Knowledge about Children's Media Exposure

Though some researchers may disagree, the last forty years of aggression research has generally found that exposure to violence in the media makes children’s actions, beliefs, and behavior more violence prone.In this context, what should parents do? Should they step it up and discipline harder? How much do parents really known about what their children are watching and playing? Studies seeking to answer the last of these three questions are sorely lacking. A survey given to high school students and their found that parents underestimate how much time their children spend playing video games on the weekends. Moreover, the more parents disciplined and attempted to keep track of their children, the more they underestimated how much time their children spent on playing video games on the weekends. Lastly, the survey found that fathers are more likely to underestimate how much video games their children play on the weekends than mothers. These findings are consistent with reactance theory which posits that when restrictions are perceived as unfair, a human works tirelessly to remove that restriction, thereby attempting to do what was being restricted even more.