A new report from the American Psychological Society has found unequivocal evidence that violent media makes children more violent. Or so they say; I haven't seen the actual report.
However, I for one have little doubt that it's quite true, because research on this question has really been rather unequivocal for decades. Kids do become more violent when watching violent movies, listening to violenet music, playing violent games. They simply do. This has been observed in children of all age groups, social strata, and family type.
The reason people get upset when you point this out, in my experience, is that such research is too often used as an excuse for government-imposed censorship, or is used by overzealous parents to shelter their kids excessively. A point on which I am heartily in agreement. I deplore government-imposed censorship in most areas, am as big a defender of the 1st amendment as you're likely to run across.
But as I often say, facts are not partisan things. Facts are facts, and stubbornly refuse to yield to ideology. We know, have known for some time, that seeing and hearing violence tends to get kids agitated and more violent themselves. Almost any parent who doesn't wear a blindfold has seen this in action.
The real question, the much trickier question, is whether this is actually harmful. I, for one, do not believe that violent media are more than a minor contributor to violent crime, for example. I do not think that watching violent movies makes kids go out and become thugs and criminals. I also think, quite frankly, that a certain amount of violence in a person's life is a healthy thing, something to even be encouraged in some circumstances, so long as it's channeled in healthy ways.
My own suspicion is that most kids, by the time they're in their late teens, have far more common sense about these things than we give them credit for anyway. The fact that your 7 year old gets agitated and likes to play-fight more when watching Pro Wrestling does not mean he's going to be in jail for armed robbery when he hits 17.
The funny thing is, almost no one believes that anyway, including the people who study the influence of violent media. Well, most of them anyway.
The answer to all this is the same as it's long been: parents should pay attention to what their kids watch, play, and listen to, talk to them about it and, when appropriate, keep them away from certain things. Do your best and use common sense.
exactly.
What I'd like to see is more reseaerch on the long-term effects. I seem to remember a study some years ago that suggested visual exposure to violence needed to be increased to get the same reaction. For example, people that see enough horror movies aren't as jumpy when they see the next one. Eventually, you become desensitized to the stimulus.
What does that mean in the developement of young children during their formative years? Does it make them more callous to the suffering of others, leading them to be more self-centered? Do they see the suffering of others as normal and acceptable? What does this suggest about cultures where violence has been a fact of daily life for generations?
I do think that children should be exposed to real life, which is often violent (because actions have consequences). And I fully intend my children will be fully prepared for whatever in the extreme by the time they're 18. HOWEVER, when is "young" TOO young?
I read something about that by JamesDobson. He pointed out that when you start tomato plants indoors, being very careful of their roots and making sure they get a good start before transplanting, those tomato plants do much better outside than other plants that were put outside in the beginning in the harsh elements during their root development. He suggested that children be extremely sheltered until third or fourth grade.
"What does that mean in the developement of young children during their formative years? Does it make them more callous to the suffering of others, leading them to be more self-centered? Do they see the suffering of others as normal and acceptable? What does this suggest about cultures where violence has been a fact of daily life for generations?"
On the other hand, does it enable to keep their heads when violence erupts? Does it better enable them to fight and win when they need to?
I would like to add to this the need to teach children to accept personal responsibility for one's actions in addition to using common sense...
I've always been hesitant to believe studies like that because of my experience with Japan. Japanese anime, in particular, is fully of all kinds of unbelievably gruesome violence and horrible aliens raping young schoolgirls, and yet crime in Japan is so low that as a 15-year-old I was allowed to wander outside alone at midnight with no fear for my safety.
I think other cultural factors are responsible. My theory goes something like this: a child that is raised by the television, has no positive role-models, and is abused or ignored by his parents may be *predisposed* to violence; violence in the media only exacerbates the problem.
Dave Grossman, a retired Army colonel, makes an interesting argument. He says that natural inhibitions against killing other humans are so strong that in training soldiers, it was important to change from bullseye-type targets to human silhouettes in order to overcome this inhibition.
His argument is that with shoot-em-up video games, we are basically doing the same desensitization for the whole population.
Don't know if he's right, but it's an arresting thought.
Not the "Anime is all tentacle porn" fallacy *again*. . .
I’ll never forget passing a playground one day not too long after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arrived on TV and, a competitive martial artist at the time, I couldn’t help but notice the (attempted) sidekicks, knife hands and other techniques that I never would have seen when I was growing up.
But my concern isn’t so much the violence itself; it’s the context. I used to teach “violence” to kids and, as you suggest, the effect in the context of martial arts training was almost uniformly positive. Kids learned self-discipline, hard work, respect of elders and peers and even the proper limits of violence in self-defense.
But the mindless, incessant plotline of action movie/TV pabulum: evil villain does hero wrong (and/or hero’s wife, kid, girlfriend, sister, brother, mother or dog), hero takes justified violent revenge [queue music], yeah. Without countervailing messages from respected sources, kids in our culture receive only this message about violence: if you’re done sufficient wrong, violent revenge is right. This single theme forming the pervasive entertainment that is most attractive to young males worries me much more than the portrayal of violence itself.
I'm not saying that *all* anime is violent and/or sexually explicit. In fact, I'm in the Anime Club at my university and particularly enjoy mahou shoujo. BUT it must be admitted that, for example, widely popular movies like Mononoke Hime contain much more violence than you'd see in a family movie here in America: people get beheaded, there's a boar monster covered in these slimy worm... things, etc. And I've never watched any hentai, but I've heard all the obligatory jokes about tentacle rape and whatnot.
It's mostly cultural differences. You know, European movies show naked women *all the time*, and the Japanese don't make such a big deal out of exposing children to violence -- maybe because violence in media *doesn't* cause children to be more violent.
Yes, but I've heard about Japan that the rape rate is much higher than reported and there are more problems with violence toward women. It's just not culturally acceptable to be open about it.
Kacie,
Back in the 1970's, I was able to wander around my San Diego neighborhood at the age of 10 or so at night with not the slightest concern on the part of my parents - it was a safe neighborhood and noone thought for a moment that anyone would bother me...and noone did. Our society has changed - it is more violent, especially more visciously and senselessly violent than it used to be.
"But the mindless, incessant plotline of action movie/TV pabulum: evil villain does hero wrong (and/or hero’s wife, kid, girlfriend, sister, brother, mother or dog), hero takes justified violent revenge [queue music], yeah."
How often do the plots actually run like that? Because I keep running into a slightly different plot:
Villain does villainous stuff, hero fights villain, hero tries to disable villain without killing him, fails to do so and almost loses his life in the process, and only then does the villain die, in one of two ways:
1. Hero kills villain rather than let himself and those he's fighting for get killed or:
2. villain screws up and kills himself acidentally in an attempt to kill one of the good guys.
Which, as far as I can tell, is an excellent plotline for our kids to be exposed to as often as possible.
Dean,
To disagree strongly with you (and likely with, oh, 99% of my fellow Americans); censorship is the answer, and the vital necessity.
Recall for a moment; Playboy was once extreme pornography; now its humdrum and downright respectable. Howard Stern was once upon a time a "shock jock" and now, pace the FCC, he's just part of the American media landscape, entirely unremarkable for content. You didn't hear "damn" on TV (I remember the first time they showed "Planet of the Apes" on TV and they bleeped out the 'damn' in 'take your stinking paws off me, you damn, dirty ape!'), now we debate whether "fuck" should be allowed. "The Wild Bunch" was considered unrelievedly violent, today it probably would barely rate a PG-13 rating. Its all changed, and for the worse - and it has had a marked effect.
American corporations spend literally tens of billions of dollars per year on advertising - the point of this advertising (and it works, or they wouldn't do it) is to convince people to change behaviour. Now, you can show me 10,000 really great ads for Colgate toothpaste, and I wont switch from Crest - its the brand I use and I don't change my mind based upon advertising; thus it goes for the vast majority of people. Of course, I probably got into using Crest due to some really clever advertising about Crest I recall from my childhood, but thats another matter - the point of fact is that advertising is done to change peoples views (and thus their actions as a result of view), and it works. Usually, it only works at the margins - maybe 1% of the people will be swayed by endlessly repeated ads, but its enough to make it economically worthwhile for our corporations.
If endlessly repeated ads for Colgate will get 1% of the population to switch from Crest to Colgate, then its a simple bit of very, very obvious common-sense that endlessly repeated ads for gratuitous sex and violence will convince 1% of the population to switch from non-violence and responsible sex. This is especially true the younger the person being exposed.
Our movies, video-games, music and television shows are gigantic and endlessly repeated advertisement, almost invariably pitched at the lowest common-denominator and thus most powerful when presented to those least capable of holding an independent thought and making decisions based upon objective criteria. Its true - the fact that everyone is exposed to violence wont make everyone violence - heck, it will hardly make anyone violent. But it will make some. Result: Columbine.
We don't censor - we used to censor; true enough, this led to a great deal of very mushy pablum on TV, especially - but it also meant we didn't routinely expose our least-capable people to images they are fundamentally incapable of understanding completely within context. Somehow or another, back in the days when we did censor, we didn't fall into the clutches of ruthless dictatorship - ie, we were free in 1970 when we censored and we are free today when we don't censor, but back then a kid shooting up his school was literally unimagineable - so unimagineable that if you were to write a story in 1970 of a kid doing that, it'd be spiked as being too fantastic even for fiction.
It gets worse every year - both what we expose the kids to (because in order to catch an audience the purveyors of popular culture feel impelled to race to the bottom of the barrell) and what the kids do as a result of this exposure.
We all have our rights - but as any libertarian will tell you, your rights end right at the end of my nose...but what libertarians miss entirely is that my nose extends as far as my eyes can see, and my ears can hear. No one has a right to, say, expose a kid to pornography - you'd be the first person, I'd imagine, to demand prosecution of some pervert in a park who showed dirty pictures to a ten year old, but do you see that there isn't a difference between a pervert doing that, and a corporate executive doing it via "sweeps week" programming? My rights (and the rights of everyone) includes the right to not be harrassed by others, and to ensure that any children I have are as far as practical, only exposed to things I approve of. Make a channel for porn available to you, as an adult, to order freely - but I do not think that anyone has a right to willy-nilly broadcast anything one chooses in places and manners accessible to non-adults, especially when such may be accessed without specific and prior parental approval.
Unless we reign in this pop-culture of violence and depravity, we will simply be breeding generation upon generation of violent and depraved people - once again, the vast majority will take no permanent harm, but that small minority which is susceptible will become worse and worse, and do worse and worse as time goes on until we have the moral courage to say that media company profits do not trump the needs of society as a whole to have children given the best possible chance of starting out life as decent and responsible human beings.
I will point out two things:
Every research project that's ever asked this question has confirmed that kids become more agitated and prone to violence when watching violent movies, television shows, listening to violent music, playing violent games.
They just do. There are no studies which fail to show this.
What folks seem to be missing is the fact that there is no proof to date that this is a long-lasting or lifelong effect. That's a radically different question and, so far as I know, most of the data is pretty vague on that point.
Just wanted to point that out.
Kacie: I'd like to point out that the Japanese are also famous for a very tough and harsh criminal justice system, and a huge cultural conditioning against behaving in dishonorable ways.
The point being: the link between violence and violent imagery is real enough, but it's far from the only factor or even the most important factor.
Mark: I continue to see a complete lack of evidence that we are a particularly violence-prone society, nor anything very convincing that what you propose would reduce it in any significant way. ;-)
Dean,
Thats because you haven't completed your journey to the Dark Side - you still have that annoying liberal prediliction to allow liberty to become license. You don't have a right to do whatever you please, nor to say whatever you want - no one does, and no one ever will. In the end its not a debate of freedom vs tyranny, its a debate of responsibility vs irresponsibility - and you shouldn't need a study to prove what is self-evident; expose people to trash, and some will come up rather trashy. Or do you think that teenagers really think up their fads on their own?
Dean,
Oh, and I'd point out that you also shouldn't need a study to prove that we're more violent, etc than we used to be - all you need do is check out the murder rate, per 100,000, of 50 years ago compared to today...unless the human species has somehow become genetically more prone to violence than it used to be, then there must be some explanation for the increased level of violence - just go down the list of things that were back then and are different today...the one really big change is the prevalance of propaganda in favor of bad behaviour which was lacking back then.
I think there is more to it that violent video games, movies, or TV shows. I played some violent video games, have seen violent movies, and played with toy guns and things like that. But it's not like I'm going to go out and shoot someone. It has a lot to do with the parents and how they are raising the kids, how they explain things like this, and what they allow at which age.
Kerry Sucks,
Well, first off let me say that your writing is brilliant and you're all around a swell guy....
That said; I played with toy guns, too, and I haven't killed anyone, either...but, as I pointed out, most people exposed to relentless violence wont go out and do nasty things...but there are some who will, and therein lies our entire problem.
We've got to stop pouring gasoline on the fire...censorship is the answer.
I have to disagree somewhat, Mark. Internal censorship is a partial assist, yes. External censorship is a far more touchy thing, and usually only serves as a stopgap.
Education, instruction in courteous behavior, teaching an honor code and how to respect tools of violence are more likely to bring about a long-term solution, even if it's harder.
Look at the old west. Look at medieval Europe. Social codes can bring about a situation where it's Just Not Done to allow certain types of violence.
Just like Gun Education is the best way to make someone respectful enough of a gun not to go pointing it at people without intending to shoot, education and parental involvement is the best way to set up a feedback loop that keeps kids from using violence as the first, last, and only solution.
Oh, and I'd point out that you also shouldn't need a study to prove that we're more violent, etc than we used to be - all you need do is check out the murder rate, per 100,000, of 50 years ago compared to today...unless the human species has somehow become genetically more prone to violence than it used to be, then there must be some explanation for the increased level of violence - just go down the list of things that were back then and are different today...the one really big change is the prevalance of propaganda in favor of bad behaviour which was lacking back then.
Yes, Mark but who is committing the majority of the crime?
I also agree that youth culture propagandizes bad beahvior.
The last I checked, the rate of violent crime in general, and murder in specific, has been on a downward trend for the last 30 years, Mark.
As others have pointed out, other countries show even more violent media and have lower violent crime rates.
There's also the troubling fact that a lot of violent crime wasn't reported 50 years ago that is reported now.
As such, I repeat: I see no evidence that violent media is a primary cause of violence--and no evidence at all that our problem with violence is worsening as a society, since a look at the FBI's UCR figures for the last 30 years will show you a clear downward trend, not the other way around.
What kind of violence are the kids prone to?
Playground fights and murder are both serious problems, but completely different ones.
All I'll say at this point is: I oppose censorship. Yes, I'm one of those licentious libertine libertarians. Free speech is for everybody or it's not free. I disagree with what Mark Noonan advocates, but I will defend to the death his right to advocate it.
"Give me the liberty to know, to utter, to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties."
-John Milton, "Aeropagitica"
"If all mankind, minus one, were of one opinion, and only one man were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing all mankind."
-John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty"
The question is "What is the moral basis for the violence?" Also, "Who is inflicting the violence, and by what authority do they do so?" For example, there is an obvious difference between inflicting violence as a criminal, and doing so as a peace officer enforcing the law under the authority voluntarily granted by the people for their protection.
There is morally justified violence, and other violence. Violence for the purpose of defining evil, which is then righteously opposed, whether peacefully or with morally justified violence can also be acceptable. What is wrong is violence in a moral vacuum. Coercive violence is also different than sports violence, or slapstick comedy violence. Coercive violence, even morally justified coercive violence, should be presented in an unfavorable light, so as to teach our children the difference between discipline and evil.
Children are born as barbarians. They must be civilized, else they grow up to be savages. Violence in the right context, like pain, can be instructive. Violence for its own sake, or for shock value, has the potential to be damaging if it makes children believe such violence is condoned, i.e. morally acceptable.
Also, coercive violence, except in the case of exposing evil for the purpose of the story line, should be presented as a unattractive necessity to maintaining order and discipline by authorities, and evil when exercised without proper authority.
So saying ALL violence is evil is simple minded. We all know that their are different types of violence. It is just as simple minded to say that violence has no impact on children. The context is the key.