Screen
Violence Tied to Boys' Aggression: Study
By
Andrew Stern
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CHICAGO (Reuters) - Boys aged 2 to 5 who viewed an hour of on-screen
violence a day increased their chances of being overly aggressive
later in childhood, but the association was not seen in girls,
researchers said on Monday.
"This new study provides further evidence of how important and
powerful television and media are as young children develop," study
author Dr. Dimitri Christakis of Seattle Children's Hospital
Research Institute said.
"Of 184 boys (in the study), 25 of them had serious problems with
aggression and for each hour on average per day they had watched
violent TV, they were three times more likely to be in that group" than
those who did not watch violent programming, Christakis said
in a telephone interview.
Christakis and fellow researchers, writing in the journal Pediatrics,
analyzed the television and video viewing habits of 330 children
aged 2 to 5, then assessed their behavior five years later.
Christakis said many parents may be unaware that the shows or
video games their young children watch are violent or inappropriate
for their age group.
"Kids that age can't distinguish fantasy from reality" and
need it explained to them, he said. "Cartoon violence teaches
kids that violence is funny and without consequence. So when
people in cartoons have their heads flattened and they pop right
back out and kids laugh at it, they really are thinking there
are no serious consequence to hitting someone in the head, which
obviously isn't true in the real world."
TRAJECTORY OF AGGRESSION
Aggression is evident even in infants, but "the toddler
and preschool years constitute the time during which most children
learn to use nonaggressive alternatives ... . When that does
not occur, young children can continue on a trajectory of aggression," the
study said.
The aggressiveness identified in the study when the children
reached the ages of 7 to 10 -- being mean to others without regret,
destructiveness, disobedience at school -- could presage bad
behavior into adolescence and adulthood, said Christakis, citing
previous studies.
The association between violent programming and overly aggressive
behavior was not found among the 146 girls in the study, who
tended to watch more educational and nonviolent shows than the
boys, Christakis said.
Boys may be more genetically predisposed to aggression, "so
the same level of exposure brings out aggression in them where
it doesn't in girls. It also could be boys are socialized to
respond aggressively," he said.
"We'll be launching an experimental study in kids this age and
try to reduce the amount of violent TV they watch and increase
the amount of pro-social programs -- which should tell us a lot
more," Christakis said.
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