Posted on 20-9-2002

Watch, Listen And kill
by Alan Marston

Children in `developed economies' watch an average of three to fours hours
of television daily. Television can be a powerful influence in developing
value systems and shaping behavior and over the last 10 years computer
games are adding to the behaviour modification effects. Much of today's
television, playstation and movie themes center on violence. Can it be mere
coincidence that child and youth murder rates have increased in parallel
with the frequency and depth of violence portrayed in the commercial media?
I don't think so.

Epidemiologist Dr Brandon Centerwall of the University of Washington,
looked at various communities in the United States and abroad, and analysed
murder rates before and after the introduction of television. In the
communities he studied, Centerwall found murder rates doubled, as if by
clockwork, ten to fifteen years after the introduction of television.
Explaining that delay, Centerwall wrote, "If TV exerts its
behaviour-modifying effects primarily on children, the initial TV
generation would have had to age 10-15 yrs before they would have been old
enough to affect the homicide rate."

His theory held across the order in which television was first introduced
to the varying socio-economic groups. If a similar study was conducted in
regard to the effects of the introduction of playstations, I suspect that
similar results would be found. How many parents actually take a close look
at the gratuitously violent nature of these highly interactive games?
Children are not simply viewing violence on these playstations - they are
actually involved in interactive homicide and murder. The mother of New
Zealands youngest killer has been reported as saying that "we had a
playstation".

The mainstream commercial media companies have implemented a business model
on a global scale, it's my contention that that model is toxic to societal
health and child and youth murder rates are only the most obvious symptoms
of modern social pathology.

Hundreds of studies of the effects of TV violence on children and teenagers
have found that children may:

* become "immune" to the horror of violence
* gradually accept violence as a way to solve problems
* imitate the violence they observe on screen
* identify with certain characters, victims and/or victimisers

While TV/movie/computer game violence is not the only cause of aggressive
or violent behavior, it is the most significant factor. So why do media
magnates programme it? One can only surmise that the corporate model of
cheapening down every product to capture bigger market share and sales
penetration into even poor households is being applied to audio-visual
entertainment. Violence and sex or more to the point violent sex, hooks
into every human psyche. Sure it might be the reptilian part of the brain,
but often that's all that's left of the psyche in the pervasive deprived
social environments created by the global free-market economy's race to the
bottom.

Parents can protect children from excessive TV violence in the ways listed
below, but individual action is not enough. To address the many and
deepening problems of social pathology the source has to be found and
re-engineered in favour of social health, ethics and responsibility. The
commercial media has to be forced by government legislation to programme in
favour of public need not private greed.

The individual parent can:

* pay attention to the programs their children are watching and watch some
with them
* set limits on the amount of time they spend with the television; consider
removing the TV set from the child’s bedroom
* point out that although the actor has not actually been hurt or killed,
such violence in real life results in pain or death
* refuse to let the children see shows known to be violent, and change the
channel or turn off the TV set when offensive material comes on, with an
explanation of what is wrong with the program
* disapprove of the violent episodes in front of the children, stressing
the belief that such behavior is not the best way to resolve a problem
* to offset peer pressure among friends and classmates, contact other
parents and agree to enforce similar rules about the length of time and
type of program the children may watch.

Its not just the government's problem, it's my problem and it's your problem, do something about it:

* Contact local MP's to express disgust at the programming scheduling of
commercial TV in New Zealand that simply buys what is cheap and attracts an
audience for maximisation of ad revenue. After all, if it's on TV there can
be no credible mechanism that prevents children from viewing.

* Promote tougher censorship on age in movie classification (if children
can't go, movie houses won't make).

* Set an example by not purchasing and playing ultra-violent computer
games, ie., transcend the reptilian brain in favour of a higher
consciousness based on ethical human relationships, we each have to grow up and past
the commercially set neolithic social standards we'll either swim in or more likely
drown in.