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Media Violence and Kids’ Health:
A Research Overview and Tips for Parents

Valerie Steeves and William Allen

Young Canadians have embraced the media like no other generation, integrating all forms—print, video, audio, and especially the Internet—into the core of their daily lives. And this new Net Generation draws on their media experience to inform and shape their lifestyle choices, values, beliefs and relationships in a way that the adults in their lives—the TV Generation—can hardly comprehend.

While the ability to access information and entertainment on a global basis offers young people enormous learning opportunities, it also raises serious concerns about health-related issues such as violence, obesity, drugs, and sexual behaviour.

For example, some research has linked the consumption of media violence to a number of psychological problems such as sleeplessness and increased levels of fear. And there is the perennial concern that media violence may lead to increased aggression in children and young people, especially those who have been exposed to real-world violence.

This makes understanding the role of media in a child’s life, and taking an active and informed approach to managing media use in the home, essential components of good parenting.

To help put the issue of media violence into context, this article provides a brief overview of the key findings from Canadian and foreign research on media effects. Understanding how violent content may influence young people also provides health-care practitioners with a starting point to explore the role that media education can play in their own work, as they equip parents to guide their children’s media consumption, and provide young people with the knowledge and critical thinking skills they need to make media a positive, enriching part of their lives.

More Graphic, More Sexual, More Sadistic

Recent research indicates that media violence has not just increased in quantity; it has also become much more graphic, much more sexual, and much more sadistic. (Lichter et al, 1999/2000)

Explicit pictures of slow-motion bullets exploding from people’s chests and dead bodies surrounded by pools of blood, are now commonplace. Millions of viewers worldwide, many of them children, watch female World Wrestling Entertainment wrestlers try to tear out each other’s hair and rip off each other’s clothing. And one of the top-selling video games in the world, Grand Theft Auto, is programmed so players can beat prostitutes to death with baseball bats after having sex with them.

While many parents are concerned about the graphic violence and put-down humour in many kids’ shows, there’s also a growing subculture of violence that parental radar often misses. Extremely violent lyrics have moved into the mainstream of the music industry, (Lichter et al, 1999/2000) especially now that children and young people can download music (including lyrics that have been censored from retail versions of songs) from the Internet. Research indicates that young people who listen to violent lyrics feel more hostile than those who listen to similar, but non-violent, songs. (Anderson et al, 2003).

The level of violence in the gaming habits of young people is also disturbingly high. In Media Awareness Network’s (MNet) 2001 study Young Canadians in a Wired World (which found that 32 per cent of kids 9 to 17 are playing video games “every day or almost every day”), 60 per cent cited action/combat as their favourite genre. (Media Awareness Network, 2001) Stephen Kline of Simon Fraser University reported similar findings in his 1998 study of over 600 BC teens. Twenty-five per cent of the teens surveyed played between seven and 30 hours a week and when asked for their one favourite game, their choice was “overwhelmingly” in the action/adventure genre. (Kline, 1998)

Virtual violence is also readily available on the World Wide Web. For example, popular sites such as gorezone.com and rotten.com feature real-life pictures of accident scenes, torture, and mutilation. In 2000, rotten.com was investigated by the FBI for posting photographs depicting cannibalism. Many kids view these sites as the online equivalent of harmless horror movies. But they present a pervasive combination of violence and sexual imagery. Gorezone’s front-page disclaimer describes the images on its site as “sexually oriented and of an erotic nature” and then warns viewers that they also contain scenes of death, mutilation, and dismemberment. The disclaimer then normalizes this activity by stating, “my interest in scenes of death, horrifying photos, and sexual matters, which is both healthy and normal, is generally shared by adults in my community.”

Anecdotal evidence suggests that gore sites are well known to Canadian schoolchildren, although parents and teachers are often unaware of their existence. In MNet’s 2001 survey, 70 per cent of high-school boys said that they had visited such sites. (Media Awareness Network, 2001)

Desensitization to Real Violence

The emerging continuum of media violence has shifted the focus away from traditional effects research to the “culture of violence,” in which aggression is normalized and empathy is weakened. Some research indicates that people who are repeatedly exposed to media violence tend to be less disturbed when they witness real-world violence, and have less sympathy for its victims. (Cline et al, 1973) In addition, children are more likely to tolerate aggressive behaviour in the real world if they first watch TV shows or films that contain violent content. (Molitor and Hirsch, 1994)

Paradoxically, heavy media consumers appear more likely to believe that the world is more dangerous than it is in reality. As viewers’ perceptions of the world come to conform to the depictions they see in media, they may become more passive, anxious, and fearful. (Gerbner and Gross, 1976; Gosselin et al, 1994)

Psychological Violence and Psychological Effects of Violence: A Few Points

• While Canadian television is noted for being less violent than its foreign counterparts, a recent study by two University of Laval Professors indicates that between 1993 and 2001 incidents of physical violence on six major Canadian television networks increased by 387 per cent. There was also an increase in psychological violence, especially in the last two years. Although incidents of psychological violence remained relatively stable between 1993 and 1999, they increased 325 per cent from 1999 to 2001. Psychological violence now occurs more frequently than physical violence on both English- and French-language Canadian networks. (DeGuise and Paquette, 2002)
• A number of studies have reported that watching media violence could frighten young children, and that the effects of this may be long lasting. Incidences of psychological trauma (including anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress) have been found to increase in proportion to the number of hours of television watched each day, (Singer et al, 1998) and the presence of a television in a child’s bedroom increases the likelihood that the child will suffer from sleep disturbances, including nightmares. (Owens et al, 1999)
• The effects of exposure may also be long lasting. A 1999 study found that 90 per cent of participants said they continue to experience fright effects (from sleep disturbances to steadfast avoidance of certain situations) from images they viewed years before as children. (Harrison and Cantor, 1999)
• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) indicates violent video games may affect brain activation patterns in both aggressive and non-aggressive youths. Some research indicates that the brains of aggressive adolescents were less active, especially in the frontal lobes, while they played video games, than the brains of non-aggressive players. In addition, non-aggressive players who have consumed high levels of violent media prior to the experiment may have different brain activation patterns than non-aggressive players with low violent media exposure. (Hodges, 2003)
• The notion of violence as a means of problem solving is reinforced by entertainment in which both villains and heroes resort to violence on a continual basis. The Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), which has studied violence in television, movies, and music videos for a decade, reports that nearly half of all violence is committed by the “good guys.” Less than 10 per cent of the TV shows, movies, and music videos that were analyzed contextual-ized the violence or explored its human consequences. The violence was simply presented as justifiable, natural, and inevitable—the most obvious way to solve the problem. (Lichter et al, 1999/2000)

Family Attitudes Most Important

A number of studies suggest that media is only one of a number of variables that put children at risk of aggressive behaviour. For example, a Norwegian study that included 20 at-risk teenaged boys found that the lack of parental rules regulating what the boys watched was a more significant predictor of aggressive behaviour than the amount of media violence they watched. It also indicated that exposure to real-world violence, together with exposure to media violence, created an “overload” of violent events. Boys who experienced this overload were more likely to use violent media images to create and consolidate their identities as members of an anti-social and marginalized group. (Bjornbeck, 1998; Udden, 1998)

The good news is that parental attitudes toward media violence can mitigate the impact it has on children. Huesmann and Bachrach conclude, “Family attitudes and social class are stronger determinants of attitudes toward aggression than is the amount of exposure to TV, which is nevertheless a significant but weaker predictor.” (1988; see also Bachrach, 1986) That makes it imperative to raise awareness among parents about how young people use media, particularly in the contexts of its content and of the people they are interacting with, as well as the importance of specific issues, such as violence.
Here are a few practical steps for parents to use in managing media use in their homes:

• Start young. It’s wise to work on developing good media habits well before children start school.
• Older kids love their media, so take an interest and get involved. Watching their favourite show with them, playing an online game, or participating in their Instant Messaging community can provide insight into what media means to them.
• Limit the amount of time kids spend with media, especially on school nights. Make sure they’re involved in other activities such as sports, hobbies, and playing outside.
• Limit the amount of violent content they’re exposed to and monitor their behaviour after exposure to violent programs or games.
• Kids model their behaviour on that of their parents. This means parents need to take a hard look at their own media habits and, if necessary, change them.
• Children should be encouraged to explore a variety of media content: sports, nature and science, the arts, music, history, etc. There’s a lot of great content out there that makes learning about the world interesting and fun.
• Consider the best place for the television, computer, or other media equipment. Never put a television or computer in a young child’s bedroom.
• Work with kids to develop a set of practical family media-use rules.

Social anthropologists and com-munication specialists in years to come will undoubtedly study our times with great interest, in large part to assess the role of media in our social and cultural development. Their evaluation of how effectively we assisted young people in using and understanding media will speak volumes about our success and health as a society.

Valerie Steeves is the Media Issues Specialist with the Ottawa-based non-profit Media Awareness Network (MNet). She is responsible for creating MNet’s resource materials on media issues such as violence, portrayal of diversity, stereo-typing, media ownership, and cultural sovereignty. She also advises MNet on public policy related to the media. She is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Law at Carleton University and has taught and written extensively on human rights and technology issues. In addition, she is the creator of the Law Room on Canada’s SchoolNet and has written a number of educational websites for Justice Canada, Canadian Heritage, and Industry Canada.

William Allen is MNet’s Director of Communications, responsible for creating public awareness of MNet’s media education resources and research. His background includes overseeing public affairs at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), where he was closely involved in the development and implementation of the Commission’s strategy for addressing media violence. He has also directed communications and marketing for a national Canadian media-industry association, worked with Calgary-based Shaw Communications Inc, and served as a communications consultant for public- and private-sector organizations.

REFERENCES

Anderson, C, Carnagey, N, and Eubanks, J (2003) “Exposure to violent media: the effects of songs with violent lyrics on aggressive thoughts and feelings,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; 84: 960-71.

Bachrach, RS (1986) “The differential effect of observation of violence on kibbutz and city children in Israel,” in Television and the Aggressive Child: A Cross-national Comparison, Huesmann, LR, and Eron, LD, Ed’s, Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum.

Bjornbekk, R (1998) “Violence against the eye,” News of Children and Violence on
the Screen; 2: 5.

Cline, VB, Croft, RG, and Courrier, S (1973) “Desensitization of children to television violence,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; 27: 360-365.

De Guise, J, et Paquette, G (2002) La violence à la télévision canadienne, 1993-1998: Analyse des émissions de fiction diffusées par les six réseaux généralistes (Québec: Le centre d’études sur les médias).

Gerbner, G, and Gross, L (1976) “Living with television: the violence profile,” Journal of Communication; 26: 76.

Gosselin, A, De Guise, J, Paquette, G, and Laplante, B (1994) « Les dimensions de la perception du monde affectées par l’écoute de la télévision selon l’hypothèse de Gerbner, » Communication (Montreal: 62e Congrès annuel de l’ACFAS).

Harrison, KS, and Cantor, J (1999) “Tales from the screen: Enduring fright reactions to scary media,” Media Psychology; 1: 97-116.

Hodges, D (2003) “Brain works differently in aggressive youths,” Medical Post (January 7).

Huesmann, LR, and Bachrach, RS (1988) “Differential effects of television violence in kibbutz and city children,” Television and its Audience: International Research Perspectives, in Patterson, R, and Drummond, P, Ed’s, London: BFI Publishing.

Kline, S (1998) Video Game Culture: Leisure and Play Preferences of BC Teens, Vancouver: Simon Fraser University, October.

Lichter, SR, Lichter, L, and Amundson, D (1999/2000) Merchandizing Mayhem: Violence in Popular Entertainment 1998-1999, Center for Media and Public Affairs, June 1999; and Parents Television Council, What a Difference a Decade Makes, A Comparison of Prime Time Sex, Language and Violence in 1989 and ‘99, March 2000.

Media Awareness Network (2001) Young Canadians in a Wired World: The Students’ View.

Molitor, F, and Hirsch, KW (1994)
“Children’s toleration of real life aggression after exposure to media violence: a replication of the Draber and Thomas studies,” Child Study Journal; 24: 191-207.

Owens, J, Maxim, R, Nobile, C, McGuinn, M, Alario, A, and Msall, M (1999) «Television viewing habits and sleep disturbances in school-aged children,» Pediatrics; 104:e 27.

Singer, M, Slovak, K, Frierson, T, York, P (1998) “Viewing preferences, symptoms of psychological trauma and violent behavior among children who watch television,” Journal of the Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry; 37: 1041-8.

Udden, G (1998) “I wanted to be a hero: young criminals thoughts about real violence and film violence,” Stockholm: Council on Media Violence, Ministry of Culture.