Screen Violence: Impact on Developing Minds and Hearts

by Gloria DeGaetano

"I'll finish her off by ripping out her heart."
"No, cut off her head."
"But I want to rip her heart out."
"I want to see her head fly off."
"Oh, all right, let's see her head roll. There! Look at all that blood. Cool."

Is this a conversation between two psychopaths? No. This exchange typifies the type of conversations that took place between two sixth grade boys when they played the video game Mortal Kombat 2. Video games today display even more horrific violence, with sharper images and more realistic graphics than they did a decade ago. Words, ideas, and images of brutality not ever imagined to be "entertainment" ten years ago currently fill up much of our kids' leisure time. And their conversations reflect the increasing escalation of the levels of violence portrayed. As our youngsters lounge on their beds watching violent cartoons, take in the latest horror flicks at movie theaters, and sit in front of video game consoles playing popular violent video games, they are either talking to themselves or talking to one another. Their inner dialogues and friendly conversations help form specific attitudes that affect not only their present choices, but also the choices they will make as future citizens and parents.

Attitude formation has both cognitive and affective components. An attitude can take time to form and be a conscious, intentional deliberation through a slow thinking process, such as a jury verdict. Or an attitude can be formed over time, catalyzed unconsciously by emotional reactions, rather than by thoughtful analysis. Attitudes developed through advertising, for instance, are formed mostly unconsciously because their appeal is primarily to the emotions. In fact, visual sales pitches are intentionally constructed to keep thinking to a minimum and emotional reaction to a maximum. It wouldn't be an overstatement to say that the advertising industry knows more about affective-focused attitude formation than does the average American. Writing about television advertising, David Moore and Charles Johnston observe: "Advertising as conventionally practiced is a form of manipulation—put less kindly, lying. We all know we are being lied to, but interestingly this doesn't seem to diminish the effect. Advertising's power comes from the place it speaks to in our psyches. It uses the language of art and spirit—metaphor, movement, sound…it plays off the subjective states of our deepest hopes and desires…Rather than enabling the soul, its task is to deceive it."

Like advertising, screen violence attracts through emotional appeal. Its power comes from eliciting primal fears, base instincts, and a natural curiosity about death and destruction. Screen violence is one of the most pervasive ways our kids develop attitudes about themselves and their world. Since children and teens are in the process of developing cognitive functions—indeed, the thinking portion of the brain is not fully mature until age 21–23—they are extremely vulnerable to attitude formation from the salient, affective avenues of screen violence.

Much of the violence on TV, in movies, or in video games displays only a narrow bandwidth of potential human responses to conflict. Continually capturing on screen hatred, rage, revenge, and brutality, media violence deceives its audiences by emphasizing human animalistic tendencies and ignoring our cognitive and spiritual nature. Like advertising, it does not enable conscious choice-making. Appealing to low brain sensibilities, it does not engage the higher cortical emotions of empathy, compassion, kindness, understanding, and generosity. In effect, images of human suffering and property destruction carefully constructed to elicit strong emotional reactions serve to perpetuate and promote anti-social, and often, extremely deranged, human attitudes.

The self-reinforcing nature of attitudes formed while young means that once a media violence habit is started, it becomes difficult to break. From these anti-social attitudes come perspectives by which the child or teen processes new information and makes decisions about future behaviors. Human brains work to form what is known from what was known. Past experience forms a cognitive structure about the way things should be. From that place we navigate the world, deciding how everything in it "fits" with pre-conceived notions. Video game researcher Jeanne Funk puts it this way, "Individuals tend to process information differently depending on how consistent new information is with pre-existing attitudes." A continual immersion in violent entertainment, then, displaces healthy messages of cooperation, negotiation, and the sacredness of life, setting up anti-life attitudes as the standard, or "norm," upon which decisions are based. These attitudes impact their screen entertainment choices as well as their decisions on how to deal with a peer they think "weird." Permeating every aspect of children's lives, attitudes gleaned from sensational screen violence can lead to depression, anxiety, fears, and numerous mental health problems. As our children's minds and hearts are filled with media violence in most of their leisure moments, they can even develop cognitive scripts that mimic psychopathic language. Taking pleasure in violent entertainment, they talk to themselves and to each other as if they were cold-blooded murderers.

While the most violent games are labeled "M" (age 17 and over), studies show that teens, and even elementary age children, play these games. One study found that 59% of 4th grade girls and 73% of 4th grade boys reported that the majority of their favorite games are violent ones. Grand Theft Auto III released by Rockstar Games in 2001, was a game popular with teens. Playing this game means one can engage in sex with a prostitute and then bludgeon her to death after she comments on "how big you are." Grand Theft Auto III attracted special notoriety as it was one of the first "cop killer" games in which a player shoots police officers up close in the face or sets them on fire and listens to them scream as their flesh burns. In Soldier of Fortune (2000)—a game British Columbia rated X and put in pornography sections of bookstores—players realistically rip arms from sockets and see bone and sinew dangling while blood gushes from the wounds. In other video games, urinating on women and setting black men on fire while noting, "It smells like chicken," are just a few of the racist, demeaning, and troubling images and messages conveyed.

One of the latest games to come on the scene, Manhunt (2004), moves screen violence up yet another notch. In this game, the player kills to vicariously satisfy "the Director," who whispers commands into the player's ear via an optional headset, urging the player to move beyond any reticence he or she may have in experiencing the "thrill" of maiming and destroying. The ultra-realistic violence sets Manhunt apart on the gaming scene, unnerving even those in the industry. "It…shows people stuff they haven't seen in games before, but in slasher flicks," said Greg Kasavin, executive editor of GameSpot.com. "…There's a lot of blood, people getting strangled and killed with household weapons."

In the United States, the average 2 to 17 year-old plays console and computer video games 7 hours a week. The average age of gamers is now the late 20s. But studies show an increasing use among children and teens. And there is also incidental data available to show that young children are being exposed to violent video game content. Teachers are often shocked to overhear their students talking about the gory details of a popular M-rated game. One preschool educator told me, after viewing an educational video about violent video games, that now she understood what a four year-old boy was telling her about "the dukem game" he played with his older brother. She was beside herself with worry when she realized that the little fellow was regularly playing the video game Duke Nukem (1999). This is an extremely violent and disgusting video game in which the player assumes the role of the hero, Duke Nukem. As Duke, the player performs "heroic" deeds such as shooting monks hanging from rafters with ropes around their necks and blowing up people into little piles of blood and gore. The game includes an image of a Japanese woman opening and closing her kimono to expose her naked breasts, when the player shoots her she explodes into a bloody mass. The game shows scantily-clad women of various nationalities chained to columns who verbally beg to be killed, whispering, "Kill me, kill me."

Like television, video games didn't start out being so outlandishly violent and anti-social. The first ones developed had unwritten rules to adhere to a semblance of civilized standards. Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, explains that "we had an internal rule that we wouldn't allow violence against people. You could blow up a tank or you could blow up a flying saucer, but you couldn't blow up people." Today, things have clearly changed. There are no rules, written or unwritten. In fact, shooting, blowing up, and torturing people are the main events in today's violent video games. Some games even give extra points for head shots. This is the modern-day equivalent of the Three Stooges who whacked each other on the head or cartoon characters that regularly bang heads. Joseph Strayhorn, M. D., author of The Competence Approach to Parenting, worries about the effects of even cartoon depictions of head injury:

"…the act of one person's hitting another person in the head is one of the most obscene acts that we can conjure up. The brain is the seat of the personality, and it is a delicate organ. It is easily injured by blows to the skull. One hard blow to the head can result in seizures for the rest of the life, or in permanent damage to the basic processes of thinking and feeling and behaving. Brain injury is a very prevalent horror in our society. Dorothy Lewis has looked at very violent delinquents and has found a high prevalence of brain abnormalities in them, the type that are often caused by blows to the head. Many of these delinquents have histories compatible…of child abuse, specifically blows to the head…Yet in movies like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles we see almost continuous blows delivered to heads, and we give the movie a PG rating."

More recently, on television, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) depicts not only head blows and other violent moves, but debases sexuality, while marketing everything from underwear to lunch boxes to seven year olds. And TV images will make an impression. Most elementary age children spend more time watching television than playing video games and TV exposes them to at least 10,000 violent acts each year. 61% of television content is violent, with children's programming being the most violent. The average American preschooler, for instance, who watches mostly cartoons, is exposed to over 500 high-risk portrayals of violence each year. By age 12 U.S. children will have seen 20,000 murders and 80,000 injurious assaults on television. More than half of the violent incidents feature physical aggression that would be lethal or incapacitating if they were to occur in real life. In spite of very serious physical aggression, much of the violence is portrayed through humor. At least 40% of the violent scenes on television include humor. Another technique often used is to make the perpetrator of the violence the most attractive character on the screen. Youth tuning into MTV, for instance, will find attractive role models are the aggressors in more than 80% of violent music videos.

Through TV, movies, and video games our children and teens are saturated by screen violence. In fact, it's becoming increasingly difficult for them to make entertainment choices that don't include inappropriate violent content. Rating systems seem to be a joke. Many stores sell M-rated games to minors. A "mystery shopper" study conducted by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission had underage children (ages 13–16), unaccompanied by an adult, attempt to purchase games rated as "M" from various retail outlets. They were successful in 85 percent of the 380 stores sampled. The study also found that over 90% of surveyed companies producing M-rated games target children under 17 in the marketing of such games.

The movie rating system likewise lacks clout. Teens, and even elementary-age children, see R-rated movies. In one study more than half of all 15 to 16 year-olds had seen the majority of the popular R-rated movies at the time. In too many instances, even young children are exposed to violent films. Canadian researchers discovered that a father was tucking his seven year-old son into bed at night and then leaving him to watch Freddie Krueger videos. In describing a deliberate attempt to reduce his own fear, he told the researchers, "It was easy. I pretended I was Freddie Kreuger. Then I wasn't scared. Now that's what I always do and I'm never scared."

The Research: Clear and Definitive

The research is voluminous and very clear on the relationship between all forms of screen violence and real-life aggression. There are over 2,500 studies demonstrating this relationship. Such research, according to Victor Strasburger, M. D. and Edward Donnerstein, Ph. D., "involves detailed cross-sectional studies, naturalistic studies, longitudinal studies, and several meta-analyses. As far back as 1972, the Surgeon General of the United States issued a warning that TV violence was harmful to the mental well being of children and adults. Since that time numerous agencies and professional organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association have issued similar warnings and position statements.

Studies on video game violence show similar results—the more children, teens, and adults play violent video games, the more aggressive they become. Dr. Craig Anderson, a pioneer in violent video game research states unequivocally: "The effect of exposure to violent video games on subsequent aggressive behavior in children…is larger than: (a) the effect of exposure to passive tobacco smoke on lung cancer; (b) the effect of calcium intake on bone mass; and (c) the effect of homework on academic achievement."

It is important to note that media violence, when properly portrayed, can also be a powerful influence for good. Scientific evidence has established that screen portrayals of violence need not lead to reinforcement of aggressive attitudes and behaviors. If the consequences of violence are demonstrated, if violence is shown to be regretted or punished, if the perpetrators are not glamorized, if the act of violence is not seen as justifiable, if in general violence is shown in a negative light causing human suffering and pain, then the portrayal of violence is less likely to initiate imitation or anti-social attitudes. But if the violence is glamorized, sanitized, made to seem routine, and even fun to do, then the message is that it is acceptable.

In understanding how screen violence impacts cognitive and emotional/social development, it helps to have an accurate description of the types of screen violence that will be damaging. Harmful media violence includes:

• Plots that are driven by quick-cut scenes of gratuitous violent acts delivered in a rapid-fire frequency with graphic, salient technical effects.
• Graphic, sadistic, revenge, torture techniques, inhumane treatment of others in a context of humor, trivialization, glibness, and/or raucous "fun."
• Explicitly depicted violent acts shown through special effects, camera angles, background music, or lightening to be glamorous, heroic, "cool," and worthy of appreciation and imitation.
• Depictions of people holding personal and social power primarily because they are using weapons, or using their bodies as weapons, and dominating other people through threat of violence or through actual violence.
• Extraneous, graphic, gory, detailed violent acts whose intent is to shock without a sense of empathy or revulsion.
• Violent acts shown as an acceptable way to solve problems or presented as the primary problem-solving approach.
• News programs that explicitly detail murder and rape, with information and graphic mages not necessary for understanding the central message.

The fundamental problem with TV, movie, and video game violence and the problem that has not been solved since screen entertainment began, is that children and youth identify with, and then imitate, the perpetrators of the violent actions they see. If our kids were identifying with the victims of violence, they would likely grow up repelled, instead of fascinated, by violence. Instead of becoming more aggressive, they likely would become more empathetic. By identifying with video game, TV, or movie victims, they would probably become more sensitive to real-world violence, instead of desensitized to it. And instead of an increased appetite for continued escalating levels of entertainment violence, they would be attracted to non-violent, thoughtful video game, television, and film entertainment. The question is: Can children and youth be exposed to sensational, gratuitous screen violence and not think it cool, glamorous, or worthy of imitation? The answer is not a simple yes or no.

Children and teens must have their cognitive, emotional, social, and moral developmental needs met in order for their minds and hearts to filter media violence in a way than leads to compassion for, and connectedness to, others and self. Without their developmental needs met, our kids are likely to interpret media violence in ways that lead to loathing for, and disconnection from, others and self. I have addressed the importance of meeting developmental needs in my book, Parenting Well in a Media Age. The topic goes beyond the scope of this chapter, but the critical nature of making sure these irreducible needs are met cannot be emphasized enough.

In addition to meeting children's and teens' real developmental needs, there are three other factors necessary to help immunize kids against the harmful effects of gratuitous media violence. To understand these protective factors, I will examine the research on screen violence and discuss its effects in relation to the developing brain and children's behaviors.

Protective Factor #1: Protect Young Children from Screen Violence

Children age eight and under are especially vulnerable to violent imagery. They lack cognitive abilities to put fear-inspiring experiences into meaningful contexts. Also, they cannot articulate to themselves or others a rationale for the violence. And, most young children have difficulty distinguishing reality from fantasy. Dr. Alvin Poussaint, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, has stated that exposing children to violent images is "abuse" similar in effect to "physical or sexual abuse...or living in a war zone. None of us," says Dr. Poussaint, "would willingly put a child into those situations, yet we do not act to keep them from watching movies about things we would be horrified to have them see off the screen."

Professors Leonard Eron and L. Rowell Huesmann conducted an extensive 22-year study from 1960 to 1981 in which they monitored 875 boys and girls and found that the amount of television the children watched at age eight was a strong predictor of the levels of violence they would use as adults. The research indicated that the children who watched more violent television were more likely as adults to commit serious crimes, be physically abusive to their spouses, and to use violence to punish their own children. Professor Eron concluded, "What one learns from the television screen seems to be transmitted to the next generation."

Another study performed by Huesmann, Eron and colleagues from 1977 to 1992 and released in March 2003 adds evidence to previous findings that watching television violence increases aggression in the long run. This study, like its 1984 predecessor, also shows that the effects of children's viewing of TV violence last into adulthood and increase aggressive behavior for both males and females.

The study examined the relationship between watching TV violence at ages 6 to 10 (557 children growing up in the Chicago area during the 1970s and the 1980s) and adult aggressive behavior about 15 years later, when the individual's were 20–25 years old. This follow-up consisted of data from the state archives (for 450 of the former children) and interview data (for 329 of the former children, and also for spouses and friends). Aggression was measured by both self-reported variables, ranging from verbal and indirect aggression, to arrests and criminal acts. TV viewing variables were: TV violence viewing; perceived realism of TV violence; and identification with aggressive female and male characters, respectively.

The analyses revealed that children's TV-violence viewing, children's identification with aggressive same-sex TV characters, and children's perceptions that TV violence is realistic (tells about life "just like it is") were significantly correlated with their adult aggression. And not just correlated: more viewing, greater identification, and stronger belief also predicted more adult aggression regardless of how aggressive participants were as children.

Another conclusion of the study is that more aggressive children are more likely to watch media violence because it makes their own behavior seem normal; however, their subsequent viewing of violence then increases their aggressive scripts, schemas, and beliefs through observational learning and makes subsequent aggression more likely. Although several parenting factors also correlate with aggression, the relationship between watching TV violence and later aggression persist when the effects of socio-economic status, intellectual ability, and parenting factors are controlled. The type of violent scene that is most likely to contribute to aggression and anti-social attitude formation is one in which the child identifies with the perpetrator of the violence, the child perceives the scene as telling life like it is, and the perpetrator is rewarded.

Like sunflowers turning toward the afternoon sun, preschoolers and young children will gravitate to emotionally charged images. In fact, that's mostly what they remember when they watch screens. A study of preschoolers demonstrated that one visually vivid, but incidental scene in an educational program, was their synopsis of the entire program. The show in the study was about the uses and construction of canals. In one scene, canal boat operators covered their heads to avoid having spiders land on them as they went through tunnels. The children were most likely to describe this program as being about spiders jumping down on people as they went through tunnels. Not one youngster mentioned the intended educational content of the program.

It's important to note that older children and teens also respond emotionally to violent images. Dr. John P. Murray, Professor at Kansas State University, has worked with neurological correlates of video violence and children. He and his colleagues used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to map the brains of eight children (5 boys, 3 girls, ages 8–13) while they watched violent and non-violent videotapes. Besides scanning the children's brains while viewing, scanning occurred for several minutes before and after viewing to establish structural/anatomical features of the brains.

The results of the scans confirmed expectations of emotional arousal to the video violence manifested in significant right hemisphere activations. The scans also confirmed expectations of involvement of an area of the brain that senses "danger" in the environment and prepares the body for "fight or flight." Also, an area of the prefrontal cortex was activated, suggesting that youngsters were "thinking about moving," indicating an attempt at imitation of the boxing movements. There was also an activation in the back of the brain, the posterior cingulate, an area that seems to be devoted to long-term memory storage for significant or traumatic events.

The results of this study of children's brain activation while viewing violent imagery suggests that violence is arousing, engaging, and is treated by the brain as a real event that is threatening and worthy of being stored for long-term memory in an area of the brain that makes the "recall" of such events almost instantaneous. Thus, the children stored away violent images in a manner that could be used to "guide" future behavior.

Once children start watching and imitating highly-emotionally charged violent images, it becomes very difficult to get the images out of their system or to channel their behaviors appropriately. This is true, in part, because the response to the violent images has formidable feedback effects on the structure of the developing brain. The brain "learns" what it must deal with in its environment, and structures functioning accordingly. The images, therefore, are not only stored, they actually help to structure the developing brain.

The younger the child, the more difficult it is to change the behavior because the child has less reasoning abilities and is more likely to be less in control of strong feelings than older children and teens. "I'm clearly seeing an increasing number of kindergartners and first-graders coming to our attention for aggressive behavior," says Michael Parker, program director of psychological services at the Fort Worth Independent School District, which serves 80,000 students. The incidents have occurred not only in low-income urban schools but in middle-class areas as well. Says Parker: "We're talking about serious talking back to teachers, profanity, even biting, kicking and hitting adults, and we're seeing it in 5 year-olds." The alarming trend has been confirmed by Partnership for Children, a local child-advocacy group that has just completed a survey of child-care centers, elementary schools and pediatricians throughout Tarrant County, which includes Forth Worth and suburban Arlington. 93% of the thirty-nine schools that responded to the survey said kindergartners today have "more emotional and behavioral problems" than were seen five years ago. More than half the day-care centers said "incidents of rage and anger" had increased over the past three years. "We're talking about children, a 3 year-old in one instance, who will take a fork and stab another child in the forehead. We're talking about a wide range of explosive behaviors, and it's a growing problem," says John Ross, who oversaw the survey.

Along with more aggressive behaviors, another typical effect of exposure to media violence is fear. Violent images can terrify young children and have life-long effects. Many parents, however, are unaware of the profound effect violent imagery can have on young children. There were reports of parents taking children as young as three years old to sit through Kill Bill Vol. 1, an ultra-violent movie, by director Quentin Tarantino's own admission. One theater manager stated, "I've seen parents take little kids into the worst stuff in the world. It's horrible." But little ones need protection from scary, violent imagery.

Dr. Joanne Cantor, who has studied fright reactions of young children to screen violence reiterates throughout her book, Mommy I'm Scared: How TV and Movies Frighten Children and What We Can Do to Protect Them, "that efforts at prevention are well worth the hassle when weighed against the difficulty of reassuring a young child who has been frightened by something on TV or in a movie…many of these responses are remarkably intense, and they can be very hard to undo." Cantor points out: "There have been several case studies in medical journals telling about young people who had to be hospitalized for several days or weeks after watching horror movies…one reported that two children had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder…as a result of watching a horror movie on television. One of the children described in the article was hospitalized for eight weeks."

At times, a media violence habit by youngsters begins because their parents are exposing them to continuous violent television, movies, or videos. The child, seeking to make sense out of the violence invents ways to cope, such as the child described above who pretended to be Freddie Kruger to deal with his fear. More often, though, children's programming is violent enough to capture youngsters' attention and jump-start a violent entertainment habit.

Conditioning Young Brains

When toddlers and preschoolers are raised on a daily diet of violent images, chemical changes take place inside the young brain. The brain's alarm network, known as "the fight or flight mechanism," sits at the base of the brain and sends out noradrenaline pathways to other brain centers that control heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, emotions, and motivation. Under stress, when angry or frightened, human brains release more noradrenaline. Viewing violent images that cause youngsters anxiety, fear, or even excitement, can increase noradrenalin levels within their brains. Often we see the effects: Children's hearts race, their eyes widen, their breathing comes in gasps as they watch horrific actions that they can't make sense of. With "tamer" violence, such as cartoon characters hurting one another, children immediately begin copying the behavior, pushing, hitting, and shoving, increasing their aggression, along with their noradrenaline levels.

When highly emotionally charged screen images constantly assault the brain, the noradrenaline gauge goes up, keeping little bodies in a constant state of readiness—easy to startle, quick to blow up. At the same time cortical functioning is reduced. There's no time to think with the constant barrage of fast-paced, violent images. There is no problem for the child to solve; no deliberation necessary. The violence takes care of whatever is not working. Violent imagery, in effect, keeps young brains on alert, producing hypervigilant children who have trouble listening carefully and responding thoughtfully.

Children who enjoy violent screen content very often come to dislike activities that require methodical thinking processes. Self-direction, intrinsic motivation, and internal control become increasingly alien. A child spends less time with self and more time with screen violence simply because the externalized images are more expedient. Thinking is difficult; violence, easy. Avoiding mental challenges means the young cortex lacks necessary exercise to develop higher level thinking functions. Over time, thinking and self-creation become "boring" and violence and virtual death become "cool." Now the child is "hooked" but lacks the cortical development, and often the literacy skills, to consistently resist the physiological lure of sensational screen violence. The learning that violence is "fun" can't easily be unlearned. Expecting youngsters who equate violent entertainment with pleasure to resist other forms of screen violence as they grow older is like expecting adults to ignore the flashing lights of an ambulance. It can't be done.

Protective Factor #2: Introduce Video Game Technology in Late Childhood or Early Adolescence

When young children start off in an alarm state with high noradrenaline and impulsive behavior, they often revert to low noradrenaline levels and predatory behaviors by puberty. One explanation for the change may be that brain cells exposed to constant stress burn out, dropping to a lower level of activity to save themselves. Animal studies show that overexposure to stress can kill brain cells. Dr. Bruce Perry, who has extensively researched the effect of trauma on young human brains, observes that "it's really scary to watch the transition from high arousal to low arousal…they (youth) develop this incredible icy quality of being emotionless." Adolescents who copy crimes they see on television do so without remorse and with cold-blooded calculations. They even detect and correct the flaws that may have caused the television crime to fail.

A major factor in over-stressing young brains is the playing of video games throughout childhood. Even playing non-violent video games can condition and stress out children's brains since they have not yet developed the habits of mind that reflect mature cortical functioning. Given the fact that hand-held video games such as Gameboys are extremely popular with young children, it may seem radical, even preachy, to encourage waiting to play them. But in understanding how the brain works and acknowledging the vulnerabilities inherent in the low brain, this is a necessary protective factor—one that requires a significant investment on the part of professionals to inform and guide parents.

Video game playing mimics drug-seeking behaviors according to Dr. Donald Shifrin, a pediatrician and long-standing media representative for the American Academy of Pediatrics. He explains, "When youngsters get into video games the object is excitement. The child then builds tolerance for that level of excitement and seeks greater and greater levels. Initially there's experimentation, behavior much like seeking a drug for increasing levels of excitement. Then there is habituation, when more and more of the drug is actually necessary for these feelings of excitement." And on it continues. Even if introducing video game technology with non-violent video games, children will continue to seek increased levels of excitement since the basic construct of these games is stimulus-response. The less the child's thinking function is developed, the more likely the child will be attracted to the ease of being immersed in a stimulus-response reality and the more likely the child will become habituated, if not addicted, to playing video games. Dr. Shifrin believes so strongly in the ease by which children can be conditioned to video game technology that he states emphatically, "There is no need to have a video game system in the house, especially for young children. There is no middle ground for me on this. I view it as a black-and-white issue like helmets for bike safety."

Constant excitement equals stress. By late adolescence, kids who have played video games daily run the risk of burn-out, complete shut-down of affect and emotional response. Rollo May has written, "Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves based upon this freedom is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness." In the practice of general semantics, the pause between stimulus and response is referred to as a cortico-thalamic pause. It takes time for the reasoning cortex to become engaged, to assess, and to choose. A mature, well-functioning pre-frontal lobe can act as the dampening switch to impulsive behaviors, initiating that pause. But with untimely introduction of video games, young brains do not get the practice of pausing and thinking through an intended action. Instead, the brain is prompted, and eventually conditioned to react without thinking. Caught up in low brain reactive states, children's brains can't form metacognitive skills to become self-aware. Video game technology, then, distances them from their core self. If, however, they have developed an interior life and prefrontal capabilities before they begin playing video games, it is likely that violent video games wouldn't give them a rush or pseudo-thrills and they naturally would be less interested in them. Rather, their brains, used to the real thrills of thinking, would seek out thoughtful games that challenge them to reason and respond creatively from their higher cortical functioning.

Protective Factor # 3: Limit Time in Front of the Screen

While violent content and video game technology conditions young brains to seek violence and desensitizes them to real-life violence, the process of sitting and watching images on a screen, regardless of the content, can predispose children and teens to be aggressive. The average child in the United States watches three to four hours of television daily. When combined with playing video games and watching videotapes, children ages 8-12 spend an average of 6 hours and 32 minutes in front of a screen daily. 65% of 8–18 year olds have televisions in their bedrooms. All this viewing means that kids are not moving. Viewing is not doing. Watching a nature show is treated differently by the brain than actually hiking through the woods. Although the content of television varies, the experience is always the same. Staring at two-dimensional picture images cannot and will not build those brain capacities nourished by physical, tactile experiences, such as art, dance, and sports. Simultaneous activation of a full range of the child's or teen's senses is absolutely necessary for neo-cortex optimal development and maturation of the prefrontal lobe.

In effect, watching television for several hours in one sitting keeps a child or teen in a state of sensory deprivation. Unlike other sedentary activities, like reading for instance, the heightened visual input with the constant image changes stresses the attention process and the central nervous system, as well. Try calling to a youngster who is watching television. Often kids don't hear us because they have "tuned out" the rest of the world. It's easy to do in front of salient visual imagery because other sensory data has a difficult time filtering into our awareness. Being in continual states of deprivation from sensory engagement, children who watch television for extended periods of time often become hyperactive and aggressive when "burning off steam" as they re-engage with the natural world.

Too much time in front of screens actually lays the foundation for children to want and choose violent entertainment. For along with the physiological need to release the pent up energy contained while sitting for hours on end, not enough movement in a child's or teen's life means their brains become limited in creating meaning from their experiences. In her book Smart Moves: Why Learning is Not All in Your Head, Dr. Carla Hannaford explains the brain processes catalyzed by sensory experiences:

"As sensory experience floods our systems, it travels through the brain stem and the reticular activating system and on to the thalamus of the limbic system. All pathways from the sensory nerve endings to the neocortex pass through the thalamus, except for smell. The thalamus not only monitors sensory input and adds emotional context to the information, it has direct connections with all areas of the neocortex…These subtle, invisible transactions among sensory/emotional/motor areas of the brain allow us to create meaning from our experience. In the process of developing the base patterns which organize our experience, different lobes of the cerebrum are involved: the occipital lobe for visual understanding, the temporal lobe for hearing and gravitational understanding, and the parietal lobe for touch, pressure, pain, heat and cold sensations and proprioception all over the body…. Through [these] base patterns we construct models of the way things work, make predictions, organize physical responses, and come to more complexity of understanding as we assimilate new learning."

The less children move, the more difficulty they are likely to have in learning. There is a body of research that clearly shows that the more children watch television, the more they choose television violence, the less they read, and the less successful they are in school. This downward spiral leads to poor study habits, frustrating school experiences, and an overall inability to persevere through mental challenges. Seeking thrills and quick reinforcement though fast-paced, violent video games becomes the next step as these children narrow their entertainment choices to be in sync with their limited literacy and cognitive abilities and their heightened need for excitement.

Making the Research Meaningful

Since media violence research is not getting out to many parents fast enough for them to consistently make wise parenting decisions, it is no surprise they take media violence lightly. And their choices reflect it. One study found that ninety percent of teens in grades 8–12 reported that their parents never check the ratings of video games before allowing their purchase, and only 1 percent of the teen's parents had ever prevented a purchase based on its rating. Furthermore, 89 percent reported that their parents never limited time spent playing video games." Parents, however, can only make decisions based on the information that is available to them. Sadly, Dr. Craig Anderson's studies indicate that "as the state of scientific knowledge supporting a significant and causal link between media violence and aggression grew stronger, news media reports about the link actually grew weaker.

Instead of relevant research, misinformation and misguided debate lock our collective attention on the wrong focus. Look up a professional journal article on some aspect of media violence research from a decade ago and you will see the same messages given by researchers today. We waste precious time and our children suffer with increasing behavior and mental health problems while arguments continue about whether or not media violence is harmful. In reality, that debate is over and needs to be buried. We need to help parents focus their attention and efforts on what will work.

The three protective factors: reducing time in front of screens, protecting young children from all forms of screen violence, and waiting until the cortex is reasonably developed (age 11–14) before introducing video games, would provide the necessary "fuel" to launch a collective paradigm shift in how we as a society and how individual families approach media violence. These seem like three small things to do. And they are. Yet, they are extremely difficult for most parents to accomplish within stressful, busy days. Since mass culture does not amplify the necessity of these protective factors, many parents don't truly understand their importance and they "don't find time" for them. Since researchers, the medical community, psychologists and other concerned professionals do not have the cultural presence that media violence does, it is critically important to support parents on an individual, on-going basis. Until the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association guidelines about media violence are in our newspapers daily and until children play video games that reinforce messages for healthy emotional development, we will be challenged to "go against the grain" of mass culture and popular opinion to get much-needed, relevant information to parents, along with specific strategies they will actually implement. But when parents have the rationale behind the request, for instance, to keep children's bedrooms TV-free, they more readily comply. With some nurturing and nudging from compassionate professionals who understand the difficulties and complexities of parenting in a media age, most parents respond enthusiastically. They want to do the best for the kids and are grateful for up-to-date information and ideas that will support their parenting efforts.

One way to share information about media violence in meaningful ways is to frame the deleterious effects through the lens of brain research. After the decade of the brain, the 1990s, many social service agencies and organizations supporting families are communicating the importance of this research. Too often, though, they miss a golden opportunity to link what we know about brain development with what we know about the impact of media violence on developing brains. Three major points about brain development provide compelling reasons for initiating the three protective factors discussed above:

1. The human brain is shaped by its environment.

The media violence environment can be considered an inappropriate, harmful environment for children and teens because it does not nurture healthy emotional and social development. Our youth do not practice empathy when playing violent video games and our preschoolers don't have any opportunity to practice negotiation or cooperation when watching violent cartoons.

2. Human brains learn best when emotional needs are met.

A substantial body of research supports the notion that social and emotional variables are integral rather than incidental to learning. We know that social and emotional school learning programs, for instance, increase attendance and decrease the dropout rates. Since screen violence, used as consistent entertainment, models anti-social behaviors and negatively affects emotional and social development, it also affects academic achievement as well, because its cumulative effects shape a child's personality and knowledge structure. Becoming more aggressive, for instance, means that the child's social environment changes. Dr. Craig Andersons points out, "The people who are willing to interact with them, the types of interactions they have, and the types of situations made available to them all change. Interactions with teachers, parents, and non-aggressive peers are likely to decline in frequency and quality, but interactions with 'deviant' peers are likely to increase." This in turn will profoundly affect the child's self concept as a learner, what he or she is willing to learn, what he or she values in the learning process, and the child's ability to envision self as competent in future learning situations.

3. The human brain must develop certain skills in order for a healthy self-identity and healthy personality to emerge.

The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, an organization working to establish social/emotional learning programs, has identified specific, research-based competencies that support children's and teens' healthy self-identity. They are: self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship skills, and responsible decision making skills. Each one of these competencies is thwarted in a child's or teen's development with a steady diet of media violence.

Effective Parental Strategies to Counter Screen Violence

When parents know that the seemingly simple things they do will not only immunize their children against the negative effects of screen violence, but also feed brain development, enhance learning capacities, and promote emotional well-being and healthy social development, they take notice. Translating the brain research and the three protective factors into specific parental strategies would include:

• Observe children after they watch cartoons with violent content and after children watch educational shows. Which programming better supports children's ability to play non-violently, to be creative, instead of destructive, to be calm and curious when learning?
• Monitor all videos and video games that come into the home environment. Essentially introducing these into the home is like introducing another environment. Is their content compatible with the values and attitudes of the home environment?
• Take the TV out of children's and teens bedrooms and replace it with an aquarium, a terrarium, a bonsai garden—anything that is alive and will need the child's care and nurturance. Make the child's bedroom environment conducive to learning empathy and a way to reflect a child's positive contribution to something beyond him or herself.
• Discuss TV, movies, and video game content frequently, paying attention to their anti-social or pro-social messages.
• Ask older children and teens this question often: How is this (TV program, movie, video game) making you a more competent and caring person?
• Affirm children and teens when they say, "No" to peers and refuse to go along with the crowd when they make an unpopular, but developmentally appropriate media entertainment choice.
• Make sure there are a few family rules about media use. Strive to keep to the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations of one hour or less of all screen time per day and no screen time for children under the age of two.
• Allow time for children and teens to reflect and think through ideas. Make this a parental mantra: "Take your time and think about it. Then let's discuss it."
• Keep the TV off in the room where kids are playing or doing homework. Allow for the child to enter his or her mental landscape without external distractions from screens.
• Consider family media literacy as a high priority and offer many daily opportunities for children and teens to voice their opinions about media content and choices.

Conclusion

The considerable problems of media violence are real, but so are the solutions. Knowing the protective factors, a few basic facts about the developing brain, and parental strategies that work, what we most need is the will to make them work. The "what" of the media violence problem and solutions come through clearly from the decades of research on the issue. The "how" of implementing this body of knowledge, though, is a more complex challenge.

Since our media culture devalues media violence research and since most of the relevant information is not yet known, much less understood by many parents, it becomes critically important for researchers, counselors, psychologists, doctors, teachers, and other concerned professionals to make a commitment to "get the word out" to parents individually. Parents are the key players in the media violence question. They can monitor, protect, manage, and teach. They can empower their children like no one else can. We need to empower parents with relevant information, compelling reasons, and a sense of urgency to heed what we know about the cumulative exposure to all forms of screen violence. If we wish our children and teens to grow up using their minds and valuing their hearts in their interactions with others, we need to catalyze parents to become transformational change agents in their homes. And we need to appreciate, support, and affirm their efforts to parent well in a media age.

About the Author

Gloria DeGaetano is the founder and CEO of The Parent Coaching Institute, the nation's first graduate-level parent coach training program offering parent coaching services to individuals, agencies, schools, and businesses. A nationally acclaimed educator, author, and speaker, Ms. DeGaetano has over 25 years educational experience as a classroom teacher, reading specialist, school district administrator, university instructor, and national consultant.

Ms. DeGaetano has worked in the field of media and children since 1987. She has written Screen Smarts: A Family Guide to Media Literacy (Houghton Mifflin, 1996); Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call to Action Against TV, Movie, and Video Game Violence (with Lt. Col. Dave Grossman) (Crown Books, 1999), and manuals for educators and child advocates, including Television and the Lives of Our Children and the Media Smarts Series for Students K-5. (Jalmar Press, 2003). Ms. DeGaetano has produced educational videos for several community media literacy coalitions including TV and Video: Children at Risk; Media Literacy: An Impact Video for Youth, and Maximizing Your Child's Potential: Healthy Brain Development in a Media Age, the first parent education video about the impact of screen technologies on young brains. Her latest book is Parenting Well in a Media Age: Keeping Our Kids Human (Personhood Press, May 2004).