The data below looks just at TV. Ponder that children as young as–hell, I don’t even know, let’s say no later than 10 years old–are playing violent video games, and that in a game like Call of Duty you might EASILY kill 500 people a day, and do so for years and years.
Let’s call it a mere 100, which is ridiculously low, if you have played that or similar games. That’s 36,500 murders YOU COMMIT each year. In 8 years, that works out to 292,000. And of course the game playing doesn’t stop at 18. And this is layered onto repeat watches of 300, and various horror movies, and cop dramas. And at 18 the damage is done.
Ponder all that when contemplating these nihilistic riots. I think most of the white kids participating thought it was fun. The kid who set the horses (yes, horses, not houses: he threw a firebomb into a horse trailer and posted a video of him doing it) on fire seemingly thought it was cool. He posted about it on Instagram or somewhere.
Let me coin a phrase: induced contextual sociopathy. You get where I’m going with that. Or if I’m talking about you, maybe you don’t.
In my own case, it was obvious to me how easy it was for TV to screw kids minds up. I monitored my kids very carefully, and I watched a lot of their shows with them. An awful lot. I knew what they were watching, and Cartoon Network was off-limits. I allowed PBS stuff, like Caillou, and Dragon Tales, and Clifford the Big Red Dog. They watched Mary Poppins a lot.
All of this stuff is subtle. It is a Strawman Argument to misconstrue media critics as believing that watching violence leads directly to violence. In some cases it clearly does, like the boy who strangled his brother to death because he wanted to be Dexter.
But in nearly all cases it leads to reduced empathy, and I would suspect to a greater tendency to see the world in polarized terms, as Good and Bad. It leads to a greater latent willingness to use force against people who are different, and it leads to a greater eagerness to have the opportunity to do so.
It leads to the sense that the world is a dangerous, violent and confusing place. This, in turn, leads to reduced trust, reduced social contact, and increased rates of depression, substance abuse, and suicide.
It is probably not too much of an exaggeration to argue that many of the political problems we have stem more or less directly from the media we consume.
I remember, back in the 70’s and 80’s, when things started getting worse and worse, how the Democrats, how the Alan Alda’s, how the PBS supporters, were pretty uniforn in condemning violence in media. Where did they go? Why did they disappear ? Did their hate of the Religious Right–which was also talking about it–overwhelm their native understanding that this stuff is bad? Did they decide that to get the sex they had to put up with the violence?
Are we better off now that porn is normalized to the point that anyone with internet access can watch it endlessly at will? A clever 6 year old could find anything. Are we better as a society?
And to be clear, I’m not advocating censorship. I am advocating INTELLIGENCE and high level, very vocal, very visible public dialogues about all this. We have data. We have numbers. And its all bad. Why is this not better known? Would parents not perhaps make different decisions if–rather than just have an age level on violent video games and movies–they KNEW what the long term psychological effects were likely to be? What if they knew what violent media was doing to THEM? The parents are not immune. These images are really not suitable for anyone on a daily long term basis.
Here is a cut and paste from the website:
- An average American child will see 200,000 violent acts and 16,000 murders on TV by age 18 [15].
- Two-thirds of all programming contains violence [16].
- Programs designed for children more often contain violence than adult TV [17].
- Most violent acts go unpunished on TV and are often accompanied by humor. The consequences of human suffering and loss are rarely depicted.
- Many shows glamorize violence. TV often promotes violent acts as a fun and effective way to get what you want, without consequences [18].
- Even in G-rated, animated movies and DVDs, violence is common—often as a way for the good characters to solve their problems. Every single U.S. animated feature film produced between 1937 and 1999 contained violence, and the amount of violence with intent to injure has increased over the years [19].
- Even “good guys” beating up “bad guys” gives a message that violence is normal and okay. Many children will try to be like their “good guy” heroes in their play.
- Children imitate the violence they see on TV. Children under age eight cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy, making them more vulnerable to learning from and adopting as reality the violence they see on TV [20].
- Repeated exposure to TV violence makes children less sensitive toward its effects on victims and the human suffering it causes.
- A University of Michigan researcher demonstrated that watching violent media can affect willingness to help others in need [20a]. Read about the study here: Comfortably Numb: Desensitizing Effects of Violent Media on Helping Others.
- Viewing TV violence reduces inhibitions and leads to more aggressive behavior.
- Watching television violence can have long-term effects:
- A 15-year-long study by University of Michigan researchers found that the link between childhood TV-violence viewing and aggressive and violent behavior persists into adulthood [21].
- A 17-year-long study found that teenaged boys who grew up watching more TV each day are more likely to commit acts of violence than those who watched less [22].
- Even having the TV on in the home is linked to more aggressive behavior in 3-year-olds. This was regardless of the type of programming and regardless of whether the child was actually watching the TV [23].