comment


‘If we are ever to have real peace in this world we shall have to begin with the


children’ Gandhi


As levels of violence in some very young children continue to cause concern, MM's editor assesses what's behind this worrying trend...


hitting his mother in a very violent way. As I continued to work on the computer following the post, I was amazed at how many people viewed the video and reacted to it. In the plethora of videos, images and comments posted on Facebook today, it takes something very powerful to draw a massive reaction, but this certainly did… While I, and many others who


A


commented, believed that this little boy was displaying learned behaviour and acting it out, the sheer level of his violence was alarming. Where does a child so young learn that degree of aggression? Well, if you believe the recent lurid


headlines about the findings of a study that was carried out by researchers from the US National Institutes of Health and other research centres in the US and Germany, it’s on-screen violence in TV programmes, video games and films that’s to blame for aggression in boys. In fact, one national newspaper actually went so far as to say that the study showed that ‘the more violent the scenes and the longer they last, the more normal the behaviour seems’. Tis isn’t strictly true, however. What the


research was actually looking at was how viewing violent images affected brain activity, not whether this could actually lead


80MODERNMUM Summer 2016


few weeks ago, I posted a video on Ireland’s Modern Mum Facebook page, which showed a six-year-old American boy


to aggressive behaviour. Te study subsequently linked on-screen violence with ‘desensitisation’ of children’s brains, not to aggression, and concluded that a person’s behaviour is probably likely to be influenced by a wide range of factors, rather than a single factor such as viewing violence. Hmmm… I wonder… I was recently in someone’s house when


their four young children were all deeply involved in an Xbox 3 game, which, from what I could hear, involved a lot of shooting and violence. Te kids (aged between four and ten) were so immersed in the game that they hadn’t even noticed me come into the room. As I waited, I had a glance at the DVD and game boxes and was, I have to admit, taken aback at the violent nature of both the game ‘tactics’ and general language being employed. It’s estimated that, today, kids under six


watch an average of about two hours of screen media a day, with kids over six spending twice that time watching TV and another two hours on the computer or playing video games. With so much time spent immersed in watching violence, it’s difficult to see how kids couldn’t become desensitised to violence. It has also been estimated that the average American child will witness 200,000 violent acts on television by the age of 18, and I really don’t see how it’s much different for Irish children, especially considering how much


of our TV feed is from the States. It’s not just video games and TV


programmes that have been overtaken by violence though; even classic toys have been influenced by this trend. A new study by the University of Canterbury in New Zealand recently carried out an analysis of Lego toys and bricks since they’d first been launched and concluded that the family favourite had begun an ‘arms race’ in a bid to retain children’s attention in the digital age. While the Danish company has been


making plastic building blocks since 1949, weapons – such as swords, axes and lances – were first issued in 1978 in its castle kit. Now, however, researchers found that around 40 per cent of all Lego catalogue pages contain some type of violence, with weapons now included in 30 per cent of Lego sets. Consider the confusion that violent video


games, TV programmes and even long- standing toys are creating in kids’ minds… Even though most kids are taught by their


parents that it’s not right to hit or be violent, there are plenty of other sources - available 24/7 on screens in front of them - that are telling them it’s OK to bite, hit, or kick - even if you’re the good guy. And the result? Well, it may not have


been the entire reason, but it may have gone a long way to explain the actions of that six- year-old boy on Facebook. „


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