Violence? It's child's play

Entertainment industry, coupled with technology, is creating a virtual world for our children where explicitly violent images are an integral part of their lives. Isn’t this destroying young minds by blurring the lines between reality and fantasy, wonders Monideepa Sahu

Graphic violence is available today at the click of a mouse. Technology brings our goriest fantasies to horrific life through TV, electronic video games and computers. Once upon a time, childhood was filled with innocence and gentle light.

Children grew up with charming fairy tales where good always triumphed over evil. Today the flowers of childhood are wilting before the tsunami of graphic violence flowing into our homes. Murderous monsters; bloodthirsty ghouls; stabbings, shootings and mutilations of human beings; all this and more are now regular viewing for young children. Children are often unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality. A constant barrage of gruesome electronic images can hijack vulnerable young minds. Scholarly studies show that people who frequently view violent images on television or the movies or play violent video games, are compelled to play out those impulses in real life. Other studies link a rise in criminal behaviour to violent media images, and call for a return to healthier and more decent entertainment.

The manner in which explicitly violent images are becoming an integral part of the lives of today’s children adds to their deadly impact. Children share free time with friends and family watching movies and TV programmes and playing gory video games.

As they munch on snacks while watching gruesome scenes unfold on the screen, they associate death, blood and gore with the pleasures of eating and the companionship of friends and loved ones. Young children are not as mature and experienced as adults to properly assess what they see. Younger children between the ages of 6 and 10 are more likely to believe that the violence they see on screen is true to life.

A continuous onslaught of bloodthirsty simulations can desensitise children by distorting death and disaster which doesn’t affect them directly, into prime-time entertainment. What protects our children from considering violence in real life to be socially acceptable, normal and fun?

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a former US army ranger and psychology professor at West Point, explains how highly sophisticated techniques have been successfully developed in modern combat training to condition soldiers to overcome their powerful, innate human resistance to killing.

Finally and most importantly, he shows how “rifts in our society combine with violence in the media and in interactive video games to indiscriminately condition… children to kill. In a fashion very similar to the way our army conditions our soldiers. But without the safeguards.” (On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman. Revised edition, 2009)

In war-ravaged corners of the world, vicious warlords have successfully manipulated violent movies to unleash mayhem in real life. Mass murderer Joshua Milton Blahyi single-handedly, or through his militia of child soldiers, was responsible for the deaths of over 20,000 people during the Liberian civil war. He was reported to have used violent movies to motivate child soldiers to kill. As the little boys watched people explode and die bloody deaths on screen, Blahyi, AKA General Butt Naked, would tell them this was harmless make-believe. He would then screen other films featuring the same actors to convince the children that nothing actually happened if people were shot at or bombed.

Experimental

This worldwide sickness is insidiously undermining the well-being of children in our own country. Sporadic news reports of violent acts by Indian children indicate the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Recently, a 12-year-old Delhi boy died re-enacting a TV serial suicide, and a 15-year-old Chennai boy stabbed his teacher to death after being reportedly influenced by a TV revenge drama.

Other Indian children have been inspired by films and TV shows to kidnap and even murder their friends for ransom. Children’s responses become deadened by the repetition of disturbing images. Like drug addicts, they can get hooked on extreme horror and crave increasing doses of depravity. For the ultimate kick, they may then try to re-enact in real life the ugly fantasies they have seen on screen. Even emotionally balanced children can suffer from the negative effects of viewing on-screen violence. It may lead such children to accept and condone aggressive behaviour in others. Children can become more fearful when they believe that brutality and destruction is as commonplace in the real world as it is on the TV screen.

Modern urban lifestyles and parenting methods support this trend towards violence. In the good old days, children spent their free time going out and playing with friends. Parks and safe playgrounds are now a rarity in our cities. Parents today are afraid of letting their children play freely outside without constant supervision. Instead, children are confined indoors for the parents’ convenience and the children’s own safety.

In the security of their homes, children freely explore the murky depths of the internet and video games. Smart children can take advantage of their parents’ lack of awareness of the latest technologies, and secretly view X-rated material at the click of a mouse. Children are spending more time viewing electronic screens, than interacting with other children. This hampers the growth of their relationships with fellow human beings, and affects their overall development into responsible adults. Busy with their own careers and making money, parents have little time to draw their children close and find out what is going on in their lives.

Are violent TV programmes and video games the root cause of escalating violence in today’s world? Or are more complicated factors at play behind our contemporary culture of blood and mayhem? Electronic images aren’t monsters with the power to corrupt normal humans into killing machines. Well-produced TV programmes can educate and inculcate sound moral values in children in a fun way.   Video games can develop children’s motor skills and alertness, prevent them from feeling bored and lonely, and falling into bad company. Violence on screens is only a part of a larger problem which makes children today more aggressive.

We like to think of an ideal past when entertainment was clean and innocent. In fact, violence has always been an integral part of human culture, and often an entertaining spectacle for the masses. Centuries ago, criminals were hanged and beheaded before the citizens of entire towns. In ancient Rome, gladiators were thrown to hungry lions as crowds cheered. In our own country, widows were burnt alive in the pyres of their dead husbands while entire villages stood by to watch. Children were lulled to sleep with rhymes of babies falling from treetops. Gnomes, trolls, man-eating rakshashas and other violent creatures peopled fairy tales, where evil stepmothers poisoned children, and witches lured little children and roasted them alive. The concept of a golden age, a violence-free past, is more myth than reality.

Role models

Several factors can influence children’s behaviour even more than TV and video games. Parents are a child’s first teachers, and they need to set an example rather than simply lecture or punish them. If the parents themselves are belligerent and violent, their children will follow suit and grow into aggressive adults. If parents condone or praise aggression, or are aggressive themselves, then no amount of policing the child’s access to TV and video games will help. If parents are peaceful and reasonable, their children are more likely to behave in a similar way.

It makes little sense to influence a young child’s mind solely by imposing strict sanctions and punishments. If children are forcibly kept away from certain aspects of life, they are more likely to yearn for forbidden fruits without knowing the consequences. Instead, let us take our children into confidence and involve them in the process of laying down rules and making their own decisions. TV, computers and video games are products of human invention. It is up to us to use them for positive or destructive ends.

Young Mohita Keshari of Varanasi has used social networking sites to render a valuable service to society. In the last year, she has motivated over 200 people, mainly youths, to donate blood. With the help of the internet, she has organised camps and marshalled hundreds of people available at any time to donate blood. Let’s take a page from Mohita’s book and make the electronic media our ally for building a better future.