Until recently, little was known about children’s views on the media and whether they felt it could harm them or their families. However, recent studies have been conducted in this area, talking directly to children to find out what they really think of the media.

Needless to say, this research makes for interesting reading but it also sheds new light on what children are really watching, particularly when unsupervised. The research also suggests children actually use the classification systems more than parents do, to discern appropriate viewing and also to seek out inappropriate viewing to impress their friends with.

When asked whether they thought the media could be harmful, many children believed that, while it wasn’t harmful for them, it was harmful to their younger siblings, who they perceived as unable to ‘handle’ what they saw.

This attitude also exists in adults and is known as the ‘impersonal impact hypothesis’ or ‘third-person effect’, whereby people assume that they are somehow immune to something they agree is harmful for others. The fact that older children perceive media violence as harmful to younger children is an indication that even they accept some harm may be cause by the media.

To get a better idea of children’s views on media harm, a collaborative project was undertaken by University of Western Sydney and the Australian Broadcasting Authority in 2000, interviewing children aged 10 to 15 yeas.

There were many findings, including what children think about violence and who their current heroes are, with some kids considering the Columbine killers heroes worthy of emulation, as the following quote from a boy, under-15 years of age, shows:

“I can’t believe how many people look up to them [Columbine killers]. We had a mufti day at school and about five or six of them came to school with their long black trench-coats.”

It’s also fascinating to hear children admit to watching media they know their parents would disapprove of. Young children regularly watch scary movies with older siblings and play violent video/computer games classified suitable only for older players. The children themselves admit to this and to regularly hiding such information from parents, as the following quote clearly illustrates:

“I can watch M [classified programs] but I have little brothers and sisters and they join in, but if it gets too violent then my Dad says to turn it off. We usually go to the other room to watch it.” Boy, under-15.

“My sister [7 or 8] saw Scream…” Boy under-12.

“Some people watch [scary movies] so they look good in front of their friends.”

“Most people like to keep up with the trend. They’re not game enough to stick up for themselves. They’re the ones that look cool and go along with the trends, but they have nightmares and stuff…” Boys 13-15.

The studies have also found that children become very frightened by some of the media they access, one of the dangers of media violence, and it’s shocking to see at what ages kids are watching films even adults find disturbing.

“I watched Poltergeist when I was about four and I had nightmares until I was about 10.” Girl, under-15.

“…I think horror is worse. You think about it for longer. You feel scared. You feel scared if somebody is following you.” Girl, under-15.

“I saw Once Were Warriors. That’s very violent. But [that type of violence] is known in New Zealand, and I was brought up with that so it didn’t really worry me. I didn’t consider it violent. It meant nothing to me. But others brought up having a wholesome family were shocked, but I wasn’t.” Girl, under-15.

The following quote highlights the strange double standard that exists in our society where sex is often a greater concern to parents than violence, though clearly children have trouble discerning why.

“I was watching a movie and this 15-year-old girl got pregnant. My mother said ‘Never do that. Wait until you’re older.’ They think if we watch sex movies we might go out and do it but if it’s violence we won’t, so it’s not so bad.” Girl, under-15.

These comments, coming directly from children, are a good indication of what’s actually going on in many of our homes.

But perhaps the most disturbing quote comes from research conducted by Wendy Josephson in 1995, exploring how television violence affects children. The seven-year-old boy quoted was attempting to overcome his fear when watching A Nightmare On Elm Street.

“It was easy. I pretended I was Freddy Krueger,” he says. “Then I wasn’t scared. Now, that’s what I always do and I am never scared.”

He may not be scared anymore but is it really a good the idea for children, as young as seven, to learn to identify with screen characters like Freddy Krueger, rather than feel fear?

The long-term prospects arising from children watching violent media, and identifying with the villains, have serious implications. While it’s true not every child that views a heavy diet of violent media will become a killer, those with a predisposition towards violence, due to other factors like domestic violence, what they watch reinforces values that can lead to aggressive and violent behaviour.

Sometimes, even kids from good families, with no history of domestic violence, poverty, substance abuse or other factors known to lead to criminal behaviour, commit crimes so horrific, it’s hard to fathom what could have led them in that direction.

Take the Columbine school shooting, in Colorado USA, as an example. The two gunmen, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were from that kind of privileged background, living in a well-to-do suburb of middle America -- the equivalent of Double Bay in Sydney or Toorak in Melbourne, with low crime rates and reasonably wealthy inhabitants.

They seemed to have no factors likely to cause them to become killers though they did have a penchant for violent media and, in particular, the video game Doom. As mentioned previously, Harris and Klebold customised their version of Doom to show a backdrop of their own neighbourhood and both began stockpiling weapons and artillery months before the shooting.

Harris and Klebold even acted out a replica of their killing spree, less than a year prior to the event, in the form of a videotaped class project. In the video, Harris and Klebold, dressed in trench coats, carry guns into the school and kill the school athletes.
In a way, it’s easy to discount the risk of similar attacks happening in Australia but the reality is if young people are becoming more violent, we are not immune. A case in point concerns the 1999 murder of a 15-year-old boy in Wentworth Falls, 95 kilometres west of Sydney.

The killer Matthew O’Grady was only 16 at the time and later admitted he didn’t really have a motive. O’Grady didn’t know the boy but decided to kill him shortly after they met at a party. Apparently, O’Grady took an instant dislike towards his victim, lured him into bush land and shot the boy several times with a .22 rifle, leaving him to slowly bleed to death over several hours.

When O’Grady went to trial, his lawyers argued diminished responsibility on the grounds that O’Grady had been desensitised to violence through repeated exposure to violent media over a period of years. Although O’Grady was found guilty of murder, the issue of media violence was taken into account upon sentencing – something quite astounding as O’Grady had voluntarily sought out the violent films and videos he’d watched, they weren’t inflicted upon him unwillingly.

However, O’Grady’s case highlights the fact that school-aged Australian children are becoming more involved in violent crime and current news reports reinforce this with a number of brutal beatings taking place at the hands of teenagers in recent months. Unofficially, police sources have even been quote in news reports as stating that young people are becoming more violent.

Even non-violent crimes, such as arson, are becoming more prevalent with more than 28 people arrested for starting bushfires in NSW in recent years, most of them aged under 18 and quite a few of them girls.

There have also been a number of incidents where children have been caught bringing guns to school. One of these involved a schoolboy actually committing suicide by shooting himself at the school. As tragic as this case was, one wonders what might have happened had this boy’s aggression been exercised outwardly, instead of inwardly. Sixty Minutes also looked into the issue of gang violence in our community and discovered that guns are regularly bought and sold in some schools.

Teen crimes are increasing overseas too, not just in the US. Even in Japan, a country with minimal crime problems and heavy restriction of firearms, youth violence is on the increase. A recent case involved a 16-year-old boy stabbing a woman to death in a marketplace, after playing a violent video game for months. The boy killer told police that his motive was to ‘see what it felt like to kill’ for real – something too many kids are starting to wonder about.

As this and other cases show, reducing access to firearms isn’t enough to prevent violent crimes from occurring because the problem we’re facing isn’t in relation to the weapons used. Rather, the danger lies in the determination of those few aggressive individuals, so hell bent on killing that any weapon will do.

It’s probably also worth mentioning that younger children have also become involved in horrific crimes, most notably the UK killing of toddler James Bulger, by Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, both aged 10 at the time.

As appalling as the Bulger case is, what’s more disturbing is that it’s not the only case of its kind. Less publicised but just as gruelling was the murder of five-year-old Silje Raedergard in Norway, a year after the Bulger murder, with the two six-year-old boys killing Raedergard by kicking her repeatedly then leaving her unconscious to freeze to death in the snow.

Sadly the only conclusion one can come to is that it’s not just American children who find themselves capable of murder – it can happen anywhere. It’s worth noting too that while overall crime has been reduced in the US in recent years, juvenile crime remains elevated above average levels.

In particular, the homicide offender rate of 14 to 17 year olds has exploded since 1985, surpassing the rates for 25 to 35 and 35 to 45 year olds. Based on population growth of 14-17 year olds and recent offending trends, the FBI is concerned homicides (and other violent crimes) by this age group could rise by almost 30 per cent by 2005.

Australia may well be in a similar situation and, as increased levels of aggression become more acceptable to our youth, we as a society must make the effort to understand all the causes of such actions, not just the obvious ones.

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