Is the Media to Blame?
Dr. Joanne Cantor, a professor of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has testified before Congress and has advised the Federal Communications Commission, the American Medical Association, the National PTA, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on issues related to television and children. She is the author of Mommy, I'm Scared: How TV and Movies Frighten Children and What We Can Do to Protect Them:
The school shootings in Littleton, Colorado, have focused attention on the impact of media violence as nothing ever has before. Perhaps it was the sheer scope of the rampage, or the fact that television covered the ongoing mayhem live, or the reports that the assassins laughed while committing murder. Perhaps this incident was simply the straw that broke the camel's back.
Is media violence to blame for these murders? I don't believe the concept of blame is useful here. Violence in the media does not "cause" teen-agers to plan and carry out massacres. Tragedies such as these are the result of many unhealthy influences working together. However, research shows that repeated exposure to gratuitous violence desensitizes children to the horror of violence and contributes to their adoption of violent attitudes and behaviors. There is an overwhelming consensus on this point among researchers and public health organizations, and a recent meta-analysis of more than 200 studies supports this consensus. Habitual exposure to glamorized, sanitized, and trivialized violence may well encourage adolescents who are already angry, alienated, and depressed to express their rage through actions that might otherwise have been unthinkable. More importantly, these extreme outcomes should force us to acknowledge that exposure to gratuitous violence is unhealthy for all of our children, not just those on the verge of acting out violently.
The real question is 'what can we do about it?' In my book, Mommy, I'm Scared, which is about protecting children from media violence, I concede that the manufacturing of images of violence is a highly lucrative enterprise, and it would be naive to expect the entertainment industry to clean up its act enough that parents won't have to take action. Parents need information, but unfortunately, the industry that makes its money off violence also controls the flow of information about violence's effects.
I believe public policy that gives parents more accurate information about the risks of media exposure and more control over their children's access to media violence is an important and feasible approach to the issue. The mandatory inclusion of the v-chip in new televisions is an exciting step in the right direction, but government needs to ensure that honest, useful information about the v-chip is made readily available to parents. If television does not promote the v-chip voluntarily (and I doubt it will do an adequate job f this), the government should fund a large-scale public information campaign about it and about the conclusions of scientific research on the risks to children's mental health of exposure to media. Government should also fund research that explores whether the ratings and labels of television shows, movies, and video games are accurate and useful to parents, and it should publicize the findings of that research. And when industries volunteer to cooperate in protecting children, as when movie theater owners promise to check teenagers' ID's at R-rated movies, it should fund follow-up evaluations to determine whether the policies are effective.
The problem of the unhealthy effects of exposure to media violence will be with us for a long time after the news media's obsessive focus moves on to other things. Public policy should ensure that efforts to reduce the harm continue even after the memory of Littleton fades.
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