According to a major study carried out by a New Zealand university over a period of more than 20 years, “Children who watch excessive amounts of television are more likely to have criminal convictions and show aggressive personality traits as adults.” Is that really a surprise?
The study, which was just published in “Pediatrics,” a USA journal, “found a strong correlation between childhood exposure to television and anti-social behaviour in young adults.”
Carried out by the University of Otago, the “study tracked the viewing habits of about 1,000 children born in the early 1970s from when they were aged five to 15, then followed up when the subjects were 26 years old to assess potential impacts.”
Some of the conclusions of the study could have been expected. For example, the study “found excessive TV viewing was linked to aggressive personality traits and an increased tendency to experience negative emotions.” The study also indicated that, “the links remained statistically significant even when issues such as intelligence, social status and parental control were factored in.”
So, all things being equal, excessive TV-watching by kids has a deleterious effect on their lives. But of course! If Joey is playing chess and Sally is learning to cook with Mom and Jane is reading a historical novel and Jeremy is building a tree house and Billy is watching TV trash by the hour, how could Billy develop into his full potential?
Unremarkably, the study reported that “it was possible that children learned anti-social behaviour by watching it on TV, leading to emotional desensitisation and the development of aggressive behaviour.” It also said that “the content of what children were viewing was not the only factor, highlighting the social isolation experienced by those who spent hours watching the box.”
Yes, the study observed, “These mechanisms could include reduced social interaction with peers and parents, poorer educational achievement, and increased risk of unemployment.”
Again, this is not rocket science, but having hard data like this, compiled over a period of decades, goes a long way to silence those who claim that there is little or no connection between media violence and real-life violence and anti-social behavior.
But there’s more. According to Bob Hancox, co-author of the study, “The risk of having a criminal conviction by early adulthood increased by about 30 percent with every hour that children spent watching television on an average weeknight.”
What a sobering statistic. The child who watches four hours of TV per night has a 120 percent better chance of having “a criminal conviction by early adulthood” than his peers who watch no TV each night. (For those skeptical of these figures, remember the data cited at the beginning of this article: The study “tracked the viewing habits of about 1,000 children born in the early 1970s from when they were aged five to 15, then followed up when the subjects were 26 years old to assess potential impacts.”)
Yet there’s more still. “Hancox said the study concentrated on children’s viewing habits in the late 1970s and early 1980s, before the advent of personal computers, and further research was warranted into how such technology affected subsequent behaviour.”
How much more anti-socialization exists in our society today with the advent of the PC, video games, smart phones, and the like? How many kids today know how to text but not how to talk? How many young people live almost isolated from face to face interaction with their friends and neighbors except for electronic communication or virtual reality?
And then there is the issue of violent content available via PC and internet. As Hancox noted in an interview on Radio New Zealand, “If you’re playing a computer game that not only exposes you to a lot of violence but actually simulates shooting people then that may be even worse, but I don't have any data on that.”
I think we could save the university the trouble of producing another multi-year study, one that will be outdated before it can be completed. We could simply say, “Take all the data you have about the negative effects of excessive TV watching among kids and multiply it when it comes to total immersion in virtual reality violence.” This way, rather than waiting another 20+ years to confirm what most of us already surmised, we can start to face reality head on.
TV was never a good babysitter. Violent video games – and other asocial media – are an even worse babysitter. This important study from the University of Otago has reinforced what we knew and told us even more than we wanted to know, and while critics of the study will surely tell us that it is terribly flawed, our gut tells us otherwise.
As America reels from yet another devastating tragedy, the message of the ancient Hebrew prophets speaks to us afresh: A nation that is filled with violence is a nation on the verge of collapse. Consider where we stand today.
While grieving families in Aurora, CO come to grips with their agonizing losses, it is sobering to realize that the movie theater massacre was actually the sixth multiple-victim shooting in America so far in July, with a total of 24 killed and almost 100 wounded (again, this represents multiple-victim shootings only).
As we look back over the last five years, the roll-call of horror and pain is overwhelming, especially when we remember that each of these “statistics” represents a precious, irreplaceable, human life (and note that I’m not listing the large number of people who were wounded):
Jan. 8, 2011, Tuscon, AZ: 6 dead (at a political rally)
Nov. 5, 2009, Ft. Hood, TX: 13 dead (at an army base)
Apr. 3, 2009, Binghamton, NY: 13 dead (at an immigration center)
Mar. 30, 2009, Carthage, NC: 8 dead (at a nursing home)
Mar. 29, 2009, Santa Clara, CA: 6 dead (family members)
Mar. 10, 2009, Samson, AL: 10 dead (including the killer’s mother and grandparents)
Dec. 24, 2008, Covina, CA: 9 dead (at a family Christmas party)
Sept. 2, 2008: Alger, WA: 6 dead (at several locations)
Feb. 14, 2008: Dekalb, IL: 6 dead (at a college campus)
Feb. 2, 2008: Chicago, IL: 5 dead (at a store)
Dec. 24, 2007: Carnation, WA: 6 dead (family members)
April 16, 2007, Blacksburg, VA: 33 dead (at a college campus)
And can we ever forget April 20, 1999, the Columbine High School massacre, where the teenage murderers were reported to be laughing as they mowed down their fellow-students and teachers at close range and in cold blood?
Added to this – and perhaps related to this – is the ever intensifying culture of violence in TV and movies and video games, with a whole generation becoming increasingly desensitized to blood and gore. According to a report posted by the University of Michigan Health System,
An average American child will see 200,000 violent acts and 16,000 murders on TV by age 18.
Two-thirds of all programming contains violence.
Most violent acts go unpunished on TV and are often accompanied by humor. The consequences of human suffering and loss are rarely depicted.
Many shows glamorize violence. TV often promotes violent acts as a fun and effective way to get what you want, without consequences.
Children imitate the violence they see on TV. Children under age eight cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy, making them more vulnerable to learning from and adopting as reality the violence they see on TV.
Repeated exposure to TV violence makes children less sensitive toward its effects on victims and the human suffering it causes.
When the Academy Award winning movie West Side Story came out in 1961, I remember hearing my family talk about the fact that it was violent. (I was 6 at the time.) Yes, West Side Story, where the gangs wore ties and danced to choreographed songs in the streets, and where the shootings and stabbings were basically bloodless, was considered violent. Just 6 years later, in 1967, Bonnie and Clyde was the big hit, and the blood was certainly flowing by then. And Bonnie and Clyde certainly looks tame compared to Natural Born Killers, which also looks tame compared to the latest spate of mutilation and torture flicks, all for our entertainment pleasure.
And let’s not forget today’s video games, where the gratuitous, explicit, intense, and utterly sick violence is at the control of the person (probably kid!) pulling the joystick trigger (in fact, as you play the game, you are that person). As a columnist noted, one well-known video game included “using cat carcasses as silencers on your gun, hitting people with anthrax-laden cow heads and playing ‘fetch’ with dogs using the severed heads of your dismembered victims.” And there is a massive market for these types of “games.”
The book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, states that one of the reasons God destroyed the world in Noah’s day was because the earth was “full of violence” (Gen 6:11, 13; even if you don’t believe in Noah’s flood, the moral lesson remains the same). What, then, can be said of a nation like America, a nation so filled with violence, not to mention entertained by violence? And I have not said a word about the violence done to babies in the womb, the ultimate example of innocent bloodshed.
Shortly before Jerusalem’s fall 2,700 years ago, the prophet Jeremiah heard the Lord say these words, which could easily apply to our country today: “Violence and destruction are heard in her; her sickness and wounds are ever before me” (Jer 6:7). Yes, America, a nation with so much potential and such a rich history, finds itself in the spiraling death grip of violence. How do we turn the tide?
Talk of gun control or media censorship is hardly the solution. The fact is that we have lost the consciousness of God and the fear of God, and without a heartfelt, genuine turning to the Lord, our future looks more bloody than blessed. The hour is as late as it is urgent.
According to a major study carried out by a New Zealand university over a period of more than 20 years, “Children who watch excessive amounts of television are more likely to have criminal convictions and show aggressive personality traits as adults.” Is that really a surprise?
