10 Jun Media Matters
Just yesterday a young man stopped me in the hallway to ask about the effects of media on family life and how children develop. I did not hesitate to state that the media we consume and encourage within our homes has tremendous influence.
For years social scientists have battled to determine how much children’s behavior is influenced by TV, movies, books and music they ingest. In recent years it has become quite popular to state that violent media, including video games, have no influence on those who partake, citing the fact that most gamers don’t go out into the street and commit the violence they do on their computers or gaming systems. But don’t let that simplistic analysis fool you.
This past week national news included a grizzly story of two 12-year-old girls who attempted to take the life of a playmate for the sake of “proving” the existence of a vile fictional character about which they routinely read online. One said, “You need to kill a person” to “show your dedication to [that character].”
In custody one of the girls noted that it was “odd” that she felt no remorse for her savage behavior. But it should not surprise any of us that a child could be desensitized to something about which she had read numerous times, including the malicious harming of children. We all become desensitized to things we see or think about over and over again. This is the very process used in training soldiers and others asked to do things they would typically find abhorrent.
But do kids really act violently just because they saw someone else do it? A social scientist named Albert Bandura began experimenting with this idea in 1961. Children saw an adult acting aggressively toward a “Bobo doll”, a 5-foot tall inflatable clown that rights itself when knocked over. After viewing the aggressive behavior—either live or via film—the child was left alone with the Bobo doll.
Not surprisingly those children who had viewed the violence were about twice as likely to engage in similarly aggressive behavior toward the doll when left alone, as compared to a control group who had not seen the aggression. Variations of that experiment have been repeated numerous times with similar results.
Parents have long observed that children copy the behavior they have witnessed. They often see or hear their kids playing by themselves or with friends, repeating the words or actions they have observed from their parents. In fact, children often act out those behaviors that they find particularly troubling, repeating them until they come to some “peace” with what they heard of saw.
Cloé Madanes, internationally-recognized expert in treatment of violence, noted that both victims and perpetrators very often state that they engaged in or exposed themselves to the very violations they experienced when young. She explained that they were trying to make sense out of the things they had experienced by subjecting themselves to or perpetrating the acts that they found so overwhelming as children.
Yes, I realize I have cited some extreme examples to make my point. But violence or other harmful behaviors need not be repeated in order to harm a child.
Violence—or any form of violation—wounds the spirit of a child. We all know the sinking distress of seeing someone or something being hurt. I would propose that this empathy is one of our greatest gifts and to lose it makes us less human, less divine.
We would never wittingly serve our loved ones spoiled or infected food. Why would any of us knowingly expose anyone we love—even ourselves—to media that denigrate the body, mind or spirit? Do we really want to desensitize ourselves and others and stop being affected by violations?
There is better media out there, and we need to wise consumers, especially when the most vulnerable consumers depend upon us to feed them only what nourishes them.
Michael D. Williams is a licensed psychotherapist, a Marriage and Family Therapist with over 25 years’ experience. You can offer feedback, suggestions or questions at MichaelWilliamsCounseling.com, or call him at (208) 360-2365.