Video Violence
A massive diet of television and video games violence is not healthy for your child
By Michelle Ciriacruz
It is in children's mind that the most violent war is fought; not in Iraq, it is a war of possession; not in the Middle East, it is a war largely due to incompatibility; not even in Rwanda, where the massacre of innocents has become so commonplace.
The most violent war takes place in the unformed minds of the very young, in their selves that are yet to be. The violence is in the intensity of how different influencing factors fight for dominance and in the results when the negative ones prevail.
In children's malleable thoughts are all the potentials that could be for the good or loss of those around them. All the wars, all the violent acts committed on this earth could trace their conception to this vulnerable period.
This war is all around, yet it goes unnoticed most of the time. Ignorance and lack of care dispossess guidance of its rightful place, and allow unfavorable influences free reign-and these pile upon each other with each generation and with each new human ingenuity.
Perhaps, the reason it is such an invincible war is the superiority of its subterfuge. How could one realize the danger when, often, it comes in the guise of pleasure or entertainment?
Mindless Learning
In the 1950s, a form of information and entertainment medium was rapidly expanding. The television became something that no home should be without. But some parents, teachers, and psychologists became concerned that children might be watching too much television and that it might be affecting their children's school performance. They were also concerned over the harm television violence might be causing on young people's psyche.
There wasn't scientific evidence then to support their fears. But since then, thousands of studies have sustained and heightened them.
The Global Media Violence Survey conducted by the United Nations Education and Sports Commission (Unesco) in 1996 and 1997 showed that television has become very much a part of children's lives: 93 percent of the 12-year old students who have access to television spend an average of three hours daily on it, which is more than these kids spend on reading, doing homework, and being with friends.
Television is also becoming a sort of surrogate caretaker to younger children-those still toddlers, as their human parents busy themselves with chores and work.
And as observed in recent times, children have proved not just constant in their attachment but grown in fervor. Kids aged three could already be full-fledged television viewers.
Large chunks of television programming are thus geared to children's entertainment. To capture the attention and interest of a wide range of childhood audience, it employs vivid production methods: shows are fast-paced, there are rapid scene changes, loud sound effects and music, and very action-oriented. With this surefire formula, cartoons became extremely popular.
Countless parents have certainly breathed sighs of relief when their children become glued to the television set when cartoons are on, away from being underfoot.
However, social and behavioral scientists warn that television encourages passive learning among children. They just sit there and watch, mental gears hardly working-which could harm them, since they are the age when their brain needs to be frequently stimulated to develop the way it must. They need to experience the world and people for these are the raw material from which the brain is able to forge new learning pathways.
With too much television, it has been observed that creativity and language skills suffer. The child's health is also threatened, since too much television encourages a sedentary lifestyle.
Child psychiatrist Aida Muncada cautions about the passivity infecting many schoolchildren. Not only does it impair their performance in school and interaction with their peers, it could have long-term effects. The passivity could be "translated later in their actual lives, that sometimes, even if they're already watching somebody being mugged, they just stare."
On the other end of the spectrum, the minds of children could be overburdened with messages they do not have the ability yet to process properly, which could result in startling bursts of emotion.
Violent programs are rife on television. There are five to 10 violent acts per hour in primetime programming, whereas cartoons are characterized with 20 to 25 per hour. The animated feature films produced in the United States between 1937 and 1999 all portrayed violence (US National Television Violence study).
As the recent cases of school campus shootings committed by American school kids caused tremendous grief and shock, it also caused a probe into its causes.
These series of tragedy caused people to pay more attention to the studies pointing out a causal relationship between media violence and acts of aggression.
In 2000, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American Medical Association, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the American Psychological Association issued an unprecedented joint statement on the impact of entertainment violence on children.
Its conclusion: "Viewing entertainment violence can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values, and behavior, particularly in children."
Children with prolonged exposure to entertainment violence tend to develop a warped perception of violence, the public health community explains. Either they become desensitized to it or they come to assume it is acceptable behavior, particularly in regard to settling conflicts.
The role of modeling cannot be underestimated, Muncada clarifies: "What the child sees depicted, the child imitates." She points out: "Aggression is normal. But how it is expressed is something [that could] be abnormal." How it is expressed can take less than ideal forms since television provides children with a behavioral script that are also less than ideal.
Says the AAP: "It is not violence itself but the context in which it is portrayed that can make the difference between learning about violence and learning to be violent (Policy Statement, Pediatrics, Volume 108, Number 5, November 2001)."
But, again, television shows tend to glamorize violence and exaggerate it. The world as portrayed on television seems 10 times more crime-ridden than the real one we inhabit.
Since children younger than eight cannot yet completely distinguish between fantasy and reality, they can misinterpret a lot of what they see on television as real.
Videodrones
Television is just one of the media young people spend a lot of time with. Some groups contend that video games could be as corrupting as television, or even more so, since acts of violence are not just witnessed but are virtually perpetrated.
Although video games can be a friendly way to introduce young kids to computers, and some games do help increase kids' hand-eye coordination and attention to detail, it could be addictive.
Which could be deleterious to one's mental aptitude, according to a report by Agence France Press. Neurologist Akio Mori of Nihon University in Tokyo found out, by studying the beta wave emission of video game players aged six to 29, that playing video games everyday could idle the prefrontal cortex, the brain's executive control system. Those who spent two to seven hours per day playing failed to emit beta brain waves. This indicates that the levels of activity in this part of the brain that controls emotions and enhances creativity are very low.
Counterattack
Reducing violence on television and in video games is not so easily done, however. Legal and policy complications abound. Also, rating systems can be confusing and are not consistent.
Defining violence and what it comprises of has been very tricky as well and has not resulted in something that satisfies everyone concerned.
And media violence, its defenders say, has its purpose. Muncada explains that some people see it as cathartic, in the sense that viewers could release their pent-up hostility vicariously through the action taking place on "TV reality." "One's own feelings and emotions are released via the expressions depicted in what they watched."
Many parents do seem to unconsciously harbor this conviction. They encourage television viewing for their hyperactive children, believing it would tone down the hyperactivity.
The AAP debunks this belief, however. It reports that after exposure to media violence, "children displayed increased overt aggression because of lowered inhibitions."
Muncada surmises that the one-way relationship between child and television could be, in part, responsible. "The child just takes in that energy, and from there it stops," she explains. The television feeds the child all those images and sounds, but cannot react and interact with him.
That energy cannot just accumulate within the child, however. "[He has] to release that kind of energy that has been hooked in, and stuck there." When the television stops, the child is again as hyperactive as ever, Muncada explains.
Valuable Input
There is no easy answer to this issue. We could ban television, video games, Internet surfing, and other forms of entertainment with a hint of violence from our children's life. We could ban any life outside of our protective circle, and yet they might still turn out not what we hoped them to be.
There are, after all, so many determinants to a child's social behavior, much of them we might not be aware of.
Dr. Violeta Villaroman-Bautista, a family therapist, advises against resorting to extreme measures. "One thing we don't like to happen is to be paranoid, that you take away the TV from the children. That's what's happening in some homes. They sanitize the environment of their homes because they're so afraid that if the child sees some sex, some violence going on, they would immediately imitate and copy [them]. But children are resilient."
Muncada makes it clear that not all children exposed to media violence will be swayed by it. Certain groups of children will be especially vulnerable to its effects though, like abused children, those emotionally disturbed or with learning disabilities, and those from families under stress.
Bautista says that how the child reacts to an influence depends on the whole context of how the child was brought up. This is where the amount of exposure, children's coping mechanism, and parental supervision fall under.
Muncada stresses that despite how influential television and other entertainment media are, the family is still the stronger influence. "It boils down to how the child is being reared," she says.
"With guidance from the parents and with the values properly inculcated, the child will not act and become violent," she continues.
In a way, the health authorities concede this. They explain that although restricting violence in children's shows could work to mitigate the problem, fostering critical viewing skills and parental monitoring and guidance work better.
Parental Guidance
The conquest of the capricious attention span of children may have contributed to the increase in the casualties of violence. Despite the pattern of results that support this statement, it may take a lot more pressure and evidence before those that make and sell entertainment accept that violence harms, and that alternative themes could sell just as well if they bother to try them out.
In the meantime, television viewing and video gaming need not be bad for kids-if parents or caretakers are there to guide, and attentive to the assumption that, "what comes in inevitably comes out."
|
