So what is this world coming to again?...

[Makalakumu]

Well, given my background in psychology, there's something I'd like to mention here....

Namely, the notion that "media violence is bad for the kids!" is an amazingly simplified and dumbed-down way of putting the situation. It is not at all black and white. Not even close.

I disagree. The statement, "Media violence is bad for the kids," is quite accurate. It may not be the only thing that is "bad" for them, but it certainly is a something that matters.

The truth is that the particulars of the violent imagery as well as the context that it is presented will impact what the children will "take away" from it. Violent media can either desensitize or sensitize children to violence. Many people don't want to admit it, but given all the variables of the research I have seen (i.e., realism of the violence, repercussions of the violence, use of weapons versus non-weapon in violence, etc), Bugs Bunny on Looney Tunes probably does more to desensitize children to violence than, say, Jack Bauer on 24.

I agree. Violence is violence. Bugs wacking Wiley on the head or Marvin shooting at various characters desensitizes children to things that should be viewed negatively.

Can you find any of those things in Seseme Street?

I personally don't agree with the "keeping them innocent" approach. But, then again, I'm not a parent so my outlook may change later in life.

Whatever floats your boat, but all I can say is that I held a similar postion six years ago when I was 24. Two children later and things changed.

.... that being said, I do not for a second believe that the children we are dealing with here became malevolent antisocials because they listened to Pantera too much or saw too much Family Guy. If you honestly believe that's what is going on here, I would have to conclude you are being unrealistic about this case. I suspect many people want to believe that is what's going on, because the truth is much more complex and sinister in nature.

First of all, I would very much like to hear what you consider to be the truth.

Second of all, I wonder how you rationalize this statement with your above statement about Bugs Bunny. They seem to contradict.

But, hey, what do I know??

???

 

[Makalakumu]

Well, the level of cognitive development you are referring to is Piaget's pre-operational stage. This is normally worked out by most children between ages 2 and 5, roughly speaking.

The children in this situation are at the age where they should be well into concrete operations and beginning to develop formal operations. However, we don't have specific information about them, so it would be impossible to say for sure.

Also note that these children could be fully developed cognitively, but still "retarded" (so to speak) in other developmental domains such as perspective-taking or sociomoral reasoning. Being able to distinguish between reality and fantasy doesn't ensure you will be a good person.

Laterz.

Working with "At-Risk" children like I do, all I can say is that if you can develop a way to measure the developmental stage of this population of children and then go out and do so, I think you would be doing some good work in developmental psych. IMHO, this is a large population that is significantly retarded developmentally. Trying to figure out why these folks are retarded is another story...but the simple fact remains, they are retarded developmentally.

This means that they cannot separate fantasy from reality...even for kids as old as 15.

 

[heretic888]

I disagree. The statement, "Media violence is bad for the kids," is quite accurate.

It is "accurate" in the same way that "Intelligent Design is good science!" is also "accurate".

Media violence, when presented in certain contexts and under certain variables, can sensitize children to violence and decrease violent tendencies. This, again, is something many people do not wish to approach seriously because it complexifies the issue.

Whether one sees a decrease in violent behavior as "bad" for children, though, is a subject of debate, I suppose.

I agree. Violence is violence.

You clearly missed my point. Not all portrayals of violence have the same effect on all audiences.

Whatever floats your boat, but all I can say is that I held a similar postion six years ago when I was 24. Two children later and things changed.

Which is why I said I may hold a different position later on in life.

First of all, I would very much like to hear what you consider to be the truth.

"The truth", that is, what the available research and evidence presently indicates, is precisely what I have already described. Namely, that the context in which children are exposed to media violence (as well as the age of the child) can impact what they take away from it. This can be both positive and negative.

Second of all, I wonder how you rationalize this statement with your above statement about Bugs Bunny. They seem to contradict.

They seem to contradict if one is unfamiliar with the research.

To clarify my above point, children can be sensitized to violence if:

1) It is depicted in a realistic, not cartoonish, manner.
2) It is depicted as having repercussions --- both to the initiator of the violence and to the victim's friends and family.
3) It is done with weapons, as opposed to unarmed violence.
4) It is initiated by the antagonist, not the protagonist.
5) The child is old enough to distinguish between reality and fantasy.

There are other variables, of course, but those are the major ones. That is also why, contrary to popular "wisdom", shows like 24 do more to sensitize violence among youths than shows like Looney Tunes.

Hope that makes sense.

Laterz.

 

[heretic888]

Working with "At-Risk" children like I do, all I can say is that if you can develop a way to measure the developmental stage of this population of children and then go out and do so, I think you would be doing some good work in developmental psych. IMHO, this is a large population that is significantly retarded developmentally. Trying to figure out why these folks are retarded is another story...but the simple fact remains, they are retarded developmentally.

This means that they cannot separate fantasy from reality...even for kids as old as 15.

Well, part of the problem is that, contrary to Piagetian theory, psychological development does not generally occur across domains. Someone who demonstrates formal operations in one performance domains may not do so in another.

That means one can be at different "stages" of development in cognition, emotional stability, perspective-taking, moral reasoning, kinesthetic development, social skills, and so on. Because of this, development becomes a very, very complex phenomena that is rarely addressed in an adequate fashion with across-the-board policies.

That being said, I have no doubt that there are teenagers that cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy. But, I am skeptical as to whether the children in this particular case fit into that category.

Laterz.

 

[Drac]

This is what is so disturbing nowadays. Of course we now have babies making babies, rasing babies. Grandma is 35. The mother 20.

Yep..Went on a 911 call and found just what N 2 Combat posted, a Grandma raising her daugters kid and she had no clue where there Mom was..The Grandson was having an argument with his "ho" and slammed the phone down and somehow triggered the 911 speed call..

 

[Drac]

And Terry hit it right on the head. Video games, movies, TV, you name it, IT HAS AN EFFECT. I don't have cable TV. We don't play video games. I screen EVERYTHING my kids watch, because I sincerely believe that it is in their best interest

I must disagree..There was no Sesame Steet or Mr Rodgers when I was growing up..There were Westerns,cop shows,Combat and The Gallant Men someone getting shot, stabbed or blown up every few minutes..Yet I and many others turned out all right..Someone gave you a negative reppie for posting our opinion and didn't sign it??? What a chickensheet individual..

 

[Lisa]

I think that much of what caused those children to act as they did was a result of the surroundings that they have grown up in, not exclusive to TV or video games. It is probably a combination of experience, neglect and abuse.

 

[Kacey]

Heretic is correct. It is a much more complex argument than "violent video games lead to amoral behavior". As video games become more realistic, children do, indeed, become inured to the idea that the outcomes of violence are not permanent. Unlike the many times the Roadrunner outsmarted Wile E. Coyote, and Wile E. was smashed, fell from a huge height, was hit by a train, ran into a solid wall, etc. - it was a cartoon. The characters, however anthropomorphized, were clearly inhuman. Many of the video games out today show recognizable people (still anime, but recognizably human) being shot, sliced open, kicked into a coma, etc., and returning to life unharmed, either during the game or during the next repetition. There is a significant body of research that shows that this exposure desensitizes children to violence (references here, here, here, and here, among others - a google search on "video games child repeition desensitization" delivered quite a few articles, both in the popular press and more scholarly journals). This desensitization - seeing realistic cartoon characters injured, maimed, and/or killed, and then come back to life, leads to a mistaken belief that injury and even death is temporary. Proper supervision by parents can reverse this... but parents who properly supervise their children, instead of using video games, TV, movies, etc. as baby sitters generally don't allow their kids to play such games. It is a significant problem, and the problem is growing; as computer graphics improve and characters look more and more realistic, the problems grows even more.

 

[exile]

Heretic is correct. It is a much more complex argument than "violent video games lead to amoral behavior". As video games become more realistic, children do, indeed, become inured to the idea that the outcomes of violence are not permanent. Unlike the many times the Roadrunner outsmarted Wile E. Coyote, and Wile E. was smashed, fell from a huge height, was hit by a train, ran into a solid wall, etc. - it was a cartoon. The characters, however anthropomorphized, were clearly inhuman. Many of the video games out today show recognizable people (still anime, but recognizably human) being shot, sliced open, kicked into a coma, etc., and returning to life unharmed, either during the game or during the next repetition. There is a significant body of research that shows that this exposure desensitizes children to violence (references here, here, here, and here, among others - a google search on "video games child repeition desensitization" delivered quite a few articles, both in the popular press and more scholarly journals). This desensitization - seeing realistic cartoon characters injured, maimed, and/or killed, and then come back to life, leads to a mistaken belief that injury and even death is temporary. Proper supervision by parents can reverse this... but parents who properly supervise their children, instead of using video games, TV, movies, etc. as baby sitters generally don't allow their kids to play such games. It is a significant problem, and the problem is growing; as computer graphics improve and characters look more and more realistic, the problems grows even more.

I'd also suggest the work of Lt. Co. David Grossman, particularly his 1999 book Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill. Grossman, who served as a paratrooper in the US Army Rangers, and taught psychology at West Point, speaks with special authority because much of his work was originally focused on the kind of violence simulation that would take army inductees--
-a poplulation which is known from earlier research to be averse to killing enemy soldiers even under intense combat conditions---and turn them into dependable killers in battle and special operations situations.

The materials which Grossman says specialists in this kind of psychological training (including himself) devised for this purpose have, according to him, most of the same properties as the latest generations of commercially available video gams, stuff like Mortal Kombat, Grand Theft Auto and others (including a disturbing recent tendency in these games to sexualize the violence in the game---a linkage which he notes was first used in early experiments with training material along these lines by the Japanese shortly before and during WWII, with marked success). What Grossman is saying is that the combat desensitization that soldiers undergo to make them more reliable killers in battle is crucially based on material that is virtually identical to a large chunk of the video game market. His book covers a lot more data and research than just this point, but I don't think anyone can dismiss the connections Grossman and others who work in this area have posited between a certain kind of violence in interactive entertainment, on the one hand, and social violence on the other.

No one is saying that this is the sole factor---its importance is that it plays into a nasty mix of other contributing causes, including the point that Terry, Lisa and others have raised earlier about neglect. A lot of children whose parents would furiously deny abusing them grow up as latchkey kids, never eating with their families (family meals are regarded as quaint relics of the Leave It to Beaver era in many quarters, and staging them requires a lot of effort and cooperation), spending days and nights at the homes of friends their parents bare know, and in general having to socialize themselves and each other. A lot of them come out of it just fine, no one denies that! But look at the opportunities all these circumstances give to the emergence of a group of really dangerous, semi-feral children who because of their particular psychology and biology are right on the borderline. The cultural mix just outlined maximizes the chances that these kids are going to wind up full-blown sociopaths, and violent ones at that.

No one thing is going to fix these tendencies, just as no one thing is the source of them. It's also true that many of the people who work in an industrial plant loaded with asbestos and toxic chemicals don't go on to develop cancer. But don't be surprised if the incidence of fatal diseases in such a place is way higher than the statistical background. It's the same kind of thing. Our society has a lot of interacting toxins, and these kids, and their victims, are part of the `fatalities'.

 

[Jonathan Randall]

Terrible, but not new. When I was little, too little to really remember, neighborhood children put me in a trashcan, put the lid on and filled it up with a garden hose. Thank goodness someone older saw what they were doing!

BTW, more traumatic for my mother than myself 'cause I don't remember much...

 

[terryl965]

Ok for the record here I'm not saying just TV, videos games and such but the do contribrute, Tiday world is all about violence and if you follow history over the last forty years, the world crime and violent crimes are doubling every year, society needs to stop glorifing criminals and make then do hard times again. Look you can kill someone and be out on parole in less than 5 years what type of message does that send our youth of America, Video games such as Crime Lords or scareface just teaches a child that maybe on the edge anyway. They may Not hurt but they surely do not help and the fact that alot of kids are left alone because both parents have to work to pay there bill contribrute as well.

In closing I would like to say can we all just get along and bring happiness to a child life one day at a time.

 

[Drac]

Ok for the record here I'm not saying just TV, videos games and such but the do contribrute..

Yes NOW more than ever..My stepdaughter from my first marrage(1988) began to exibit real anti-partentral, teacher behavior..We stopped the MTV and she soon was back to normal self..Have you seen the music videos today?? ALL women are "ho" and "Bitches"..For the men the ONLY thing that makes you a man is money, drugs, guns, gold jewlery and cars with big rims and treating women like sheet..

 

[terryl965]

Yes NOW more than ever..My stepdaughter from my first marrage(1988) began to exibit real anti-partentral, teacher behavior..We stopped the MTV and she soon was back to normal self..Have you seen the music videos today?? ALL women are "ho" and "Bitches"..For the men the ONLY thing that makes you a man is money, drugs, guns, gold jewlery and cars with big rims and treating women like sheet..

Right on Drac and you are right my kids are not allowed to watch MTV to much drugs and guns and ho and such

 

[heretic888]

Ok for the record here I'm not saying just TV, videos games and such but the do contribrute, Tiday world is all about violence and if you follow history over the last forty years, the world crime and violent crimes are doubling every year, society needs to stop glorifing criminals and make then do hard times again. Look you can kill someone and be out on parole in less than 5 years what type of message does that send our youth of America, Video games such as Crime Lords or scareface just teaches a child that maybe on the edge anyway. They may Not hurt but they surely do not help and the fact that alot of kids are left alone because both parents have to work to pay there bill contribrute as well.

In closing I would like to say can we all just get along and bring happiness to a child life one day at a time.

That's all well and good, but the problem is that people are absurdly overexaggerating the role of television and video games in inculcating violent behavioral trends. If you seriously want to reduce violent trends among youth, you would do something about the following:

1) War.

2) Capital punishment.

3) Easy availability of handguns.

4) Socioeconomic inequality.

5) Ethnic conflict.

Any one of the five aforementioned points do just as much, if not more, to contribute to violent trends in youth as fictitious depictions of violence.

But, people will continue to target video games, music, and television. You know why?? Because its easy. The five points I mentioned are real social problems that require a lot of national effort to address, with a large portion of the population rationalizing their existence away.

I find it curious that people are rallying against something that parents have some measure of control over (i.e., the content of television and radio in one's household), but when it comes to the stuff that requires actual communal effort --- racism, poverty, war, state-sponsored executions, etc. --- there is noticeable silence.

That, in my opinion, speaks volumes more about the state of our Union than some frivolous video game.

Laterz.

 

[Blotan Hunka]

All of those issues have been around for eons...technology has not. If there is a statistical increase in violence I would be looking at what is new before blaming things on some political adgenda.

 

[heretic888]

All of those issues have been around for eons...technology has not.

Not in the United States, they haven't.

 

[CoryKS]

That's all well and good, but the problem is that people are absurdly overexaggerating the role of television and video games in inculcating violent behavioral trends. If you seriously want to reduce violent trends among youth, you would do something about the following:

1) War.

2) Capital punishment.

3) Easy availability of handguns.

4) Socioeconomic inequality.

5) Ethnic conflict.

Any one of the five aforementioned points do just as much, if not more, to contribute to violent trends in youth as fictitious depictions of violence.

But, people will continue to target video games, music, and television. You know why?? Because its easy. The five points I mentioned are real social problems that require a lot of national effort to address, with a large portion of the population rationalizing their existence away.

I find it curious that people are rallying against something that parents have some measure of control over (i.e., the content of television and radio in one's household), but when it comes to the stuff that requires actual communal effort --- racism, poverty, war, state-sponsored executions, etc. --- there is noticeable silence.

That, in my opinion, speaks volumes more about the state of our Union than some frivolous video game.

Laterz.

Which Union are you referring to? I ask because I don't know your whereabouts. This attack occurred in Canada, which, if I'm not mistaken, has a fairly "progressive" attitude about the five factors you listed. I'm pretty sure they don't have a death penalty, don't know about the availability of handguns.

 

[Blotan Hunka]

Canadians watching too much US television/movies??

 

[terryl965]

1) War. I'm doing nothing about war I have absolutely no control over the matter

2) Capital punishment. I have been an advocate for tougher laws since I was old enough to be able

3) Easy availability of handguns Been involved with the permit process for tougher hand gun laws

4) Socioeconomic inequality. We as a wholei9n our household try and adopt and manage to help raise funds for various organization thoughout the world

5) Ethnic conflict. Well sense my wife is ethnic and I'm Jewish we do as we can there as well

One you did not mention is Hunger at my school we donate our time for the local foor shelter and once a month we hold a food drive for our local food banks

I know it may not seem much to some but we try to help all that is in need, not only with love but with support for them as well.
This does not change a thing about tv, videos games and other such violent act being in our everyday life/ Please do not try in shadow what is really going on in the world, the facts are every since violent behavior has been glorified the crime rate has jumped/

I know what I allow my kids to do and hopefully they will grow up and live a happy life.I also try and teach my students that by giving back to the community you are helping out for the long haul.

 

[heretic888]

Which Union are you referring to? I ask because I don't know your whereabouts. This attack occurred in Canada, which, if I'm not mistaken, has a fairly "progressive" attitude about the five factors you listed. I'm pretty sure they don't have a death penalty, don't know about the availability of handguns.

In the context of my previous post, I wasn't referring specifically to the incident in question. I was referring to the trends in youth violence in the United States.

Laterz.