Children, Sex and Media Violence in Nigeria

Abstract

The portrayal of violence and sex in the media has been known to have gain popularity in recent time. There is an evident connection between what is portrayed in the media with what is observed and practiced by children. The paper empirically examined the influence of media sex and violence on children. Ninety junior secondary school pupils were randomly selected for the study; there were 42 males and 48 females that participated in the study. The age range of participants was between 8-16 years. The experimental design was adopted for the study. Two hypotheses were tested in the study, and results revealed that media violence significantly influenced child behaviour (p = 0.0005), and there was a significant influence of media sex on child behaviour (p = 0.0005). The study suggests that exposure to violent and sexually explicit material is likely to have a negative influence on children's behaviour.