[Reflections on the cause and consequences of exposure to violent presentations in children]

The article deals with the questions why children and adolescents nowadays have an intensive use of violent videos and which are the consequences of this use. The motives of the use are compensation and flight of daily problems and of inner psychic emptiness, identification with grandiose heroes, the experience of anxiety-joy, protest against the parents' generation and the test of courage to obtain a social status in the peer group. The consequences of violent presentations can be understood by different psychological concepts as social cognitive learning theory, suggestion hypothesis, justification hypothesis, habituation hypothesis, catharsis theory, priming effect, arousal theory. These findings lead to the following consequences: Media critical lectures at school, governmental protection of children against harmful products, solution of the underlying social problems which lead to resignation and hopelessness in children and adolescent.