As dusk shadows the city, Torrey glances at the clock on the stove, gets up from his makeshift desk at the kitchen table and turns on the evening news. Reluctantly, he returns to his math homework, waiting to hear the sport's segment, wishing instead that he was hanging with his fifth-grade friends, "patrolling" their neighborhood on Martin Luther King Boulevard in South Central Los Angeles. Instead, Torrey overhears the day's events while the TV keeps him company because his mom won't allow him out while she's at work. Relatively benign today, Torrey makes a mental note that no one nearby has been shot. He surveys the quiet boulevard from the picture window as if to confirm the news, hopeful the peace lasts till dawn. Every night, Torrey recites a little prayer just before nodding off to the safe world of dreams, a prayer that sadly came to life in Torrey's heart when his 12-year-old cousin met an early death last Spring in a gang-related incident:
"Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray thee Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray thee Lord my soul to take."
Media violence: a longstanding concern
Though not everyone agrees that TV and other popular video games breed violence in America, it's fairly easy nowadays to find a wide assortment of experts convinced that these media negatively influence kids. As far back as 1992, then New York Congressman and Chair of the U.S. Subcommittee on Crime and Criminal Justice said in his opening statement during a Subcommittee hearing that "a thousand studies" have been conducted since 1955 concerning television violence and aggressive behavior" and "televised violence does have a link to the epidemic of crime in this country."
In June 1992, Brandon Centerwall, M.D. published an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) citing a number of historical studies including a 1972 Surgeon General Report, a 1975 Special Report put together by JAMA, and a 1982 work coordinated through the National Institute of Mental Health, altogether documenting a broad consensus that exposure to violence on television increases children's physical aggressiveness.
Even before Dr. Centerwall's report, and responding to the link between exposure to television violence and aggressive behavior in children, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a 1990 policy statement advising parents to limit children's television viewing to one or two hours a day.
Video games plus television, too much violence?
Eighteen years later, with video games now prominently added to the mix, the October 1, 2010 Harvard Mental Health Letter features an article, "Violent Video Games and Young People" in which parents are advised to take steps to protect children from potential harm posed by media violence.
Back in the day (circa 1990), kids spent an average of 900 hours a year in school, but between 1,200 and 1,800 hours a year in front of the television set – equating to more than 27 hours a week of TV. At the time there were an average of 25 acts of violence per hour in children's programming. In 2008, the Pew Research Center reported that 97% of kids between the ages of 12 and 17 play video games. Another study found that more than 50% of all video games rated by the Entertainment Software Rating Board contain violence. The tools of popular media may change, but violence continues to hold its own as far as content is concerned.
Interactive video games may be more harmful when violent content is at play
The American Academy of Pediatrics notes that violence in video games may be more harmful than violence on TV because video games are interactive and encourage role playing. According to the Harvard Mental Health Letter article, the fear is "that these games may serve as virtual rehearsals for actual violence."
Children learn by mimicking
Like Dr. Centerwall reported back in 1990, today's pediatricians and mental health experts explain that children learn by imitating, and that especially young children lack the instinct to gauge which behaviors are appropriate to imitate versus those behaviors that are not so appropriate. Consequently, studies find that children will mimic even destructive and anti-social behavior, not really understanding the consequences.
Some not so concerned about video content
In June 2010, the American Psychological Association devoted an issue of the Review of General Psychology, in which some researchers challenge the notion that media violence leads to actual acting-out of violence and aggression. One argument is that many studies measure violent content, but the same studies fail to prove a cause and effect between the media content and real-world acting-out.
Getting real about safety in schools
In a perfect world, we would be able to identify why the streets nowadays seem far less safe than in days gone by. In 1940, teachers listed the top seven problems in public schools as talking out of turn, chewing gum, making noise, running in the halls, cutting in line, dress code infarctions and illiteracy.
In 1980, teachers identified the top seven problems in school as suicide, assault, robbery, rape, drug abuse, school abuse and pregnancy. What will the top seven problems be in 2020? Given the direction of increasingly violent behavior and the threats that our kids face, this author believes that there is a correlation between the content that fills a child's day and the content that makes the evening news.
References:
Centerwall, M.D., Brandon S. (1992). "Television and Violence: The Scale of the Problem and Where to Go From Here," Journal of the American Medical Association, 6:1992.
102nd Congress: Second Session (1992). "Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Crime and Criminal Justice of the Committee on the Judiciary House of Representatives," 15December1992.
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