When is the last time you sat down with your kids, let them pick what they wanted to watch on TV — and sat down with them and watched it all the way through?
Same goes for their favorite video game: Have you joined them and watched what they’re actually playing?
The typical child will have seen 8,000 murders and 100,000 other acts of violence (including rape and assault) before middle school.
If you answered yes to either of these, you are the very rare parent out there — so you know how violent these things are. You know our kids are exposed to an incredible amount of violence in the media they consume.
As recently as the year 2000, every G-rated movie contained violence, as did 60 percent of prime-time TV shows, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). In 1998, a comprehensive assessment of screen violence estimated that the typical child will see 8,000 murders and 100,000 other acts of violence (including rape and assault) before middle school.
The 1998 report was limited to television — it was the primary platform exposing children to violence at that time. But we’ve come a scary long way since then.
Because of this, and perhaps because of the escalating violence we’re seeing across the country, the AAP this past week issued a recommendation to parents, advising that children under the age of six be shielded from on-screen violence; that video games stop awarding “points” for shooting living targets; and that the media avoid downplaying the proven link between virtual and real violence.
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Today’s tablets and new gaming platforms expose children and adolescents to what is known as “virtual violence.” Said the recommendation, “This form of violence is not experienced physically; rather, it is experienced in realistic ways via new technology and ever more intense and realistic games.”
“It’s incredibly dangerous,” said Dr. Rosemary Stein, a pediatrician in Burlington, North Carolina.
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“As parents, we’re thinking something that’s very, very wrong — which is that children are not little adults. They are brains, and nerves, and muscles, and formations. And you are carving new pathways in that little body of theirs that connects the brain to the rest of the body. When you are exposing a child to violent media or games, that’s what they will be.”
Stein and her husband, who is also a physician, say they’ve seen a generation of children who are now grown up — and they believe the consequences of over-exposure to onscreen violence are very clear.
“The most important job we do is retrain parents. We lost the blueprint on how to raise good, sturdy adults and that’s why we’re doing so poorly. We didn’t take good care of this 20 years ago, so that’s why we’re fighting this now,” Stein said.
She agrees with the AAP’s concern about children’s exposure to virtual violence and the effect it has on their overall health and well-being.
“If there’s a 1 in 100 chance that it is going to cause a bad outcome in our children, would we still want to do it?” said one pediatrician.
Children don’t disassociate TV with reality very well, Stein said. “They go into that world, instead of staying out here and watching it as a third party. They truly think many times they are part of that environment and that those are things that may be OK to do in the right circumstances,” said Stein, referring to violent video games.
What Stein doesn’t understand is why the recommendations are made only for those under six years of age. “They’re not supposed to have abstract thought until they’re in middle school, between ages 12 to 14, so I’m not sure why six is the magic number.”
The AAP recommends that pediatricians consider making children’s “media diets” — the amount and type of media they consume — an essential part of all well-child exams from now on. The organization is encouraging pediatricians to guide parents on content as well as time limits for using media.
Parents, they hope, will also co-play these games with their kids so they have a better sense of what the games entail.
“Parents should understand that young children do not always distinguish fantasy from reality. Cartoon violence can seem very real — and it can have detrimental effects. Furthermore, first-person shooter games, in which killing others is the central theme, are not appropriate for any children,” says the recommendation.
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The entertainment industry is also being asked to avoid the glamorization and normalization of violence as an acceptable means of resolving conflict.
“Understand that you’re forming brain pathways — and those images will stay with your child forever. We can all remember seeing a scary movie when we were children and the impact that had on us. Children will keep those images forever. So when you look at something, look at it through the eyes of a five-, six- or eight-year-old, and see how it might have impacted you instead of seeing it as an adult and saying, ‘Ah, that’s no big deal,'” said Stein.
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Doing that, she hopes, offers parents a better perspective.
“We just want our kids to have the best outcome — and if there’s a 1 in 100 chance that it is going to cause a bad outcome in our children, would we still want to do it?”
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