Consensus Near on Violent Media Effect's

B O S T O N, Sept. 11, 2000 -- In the aftermath of the Columbine High School shootings, fingers quickly pointed at the violent media favored by the killers: shoot ’em up video games, Quentin Tarantino films, Marilyn Manson music.

But what does the research actually say? Has the connection between watching violent behavior and behaving violently ever been proven?

In other words, can violent media really make good kids go bad?

Scientists have found that proving that link can be a frustrating undertaking, with many other factors — family history, poverty, poor schooling — factoring into a complex equation.

Thousands of Studies Agree

But after four decades of research and more than 3,000 studies examining the issue, most say the theory that violent entertainment causes aggression is proven — although entertainment groups and some social scientists are still loath to admit it.

In his announcement this morning slamming the video game, music and movie industries for marketing “mature” material to children, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Robert Pitofsky said his agency’s review of the scientific literature raises “a valid cause for concern.”

“Scholars and observers generally agree that exposure to violent materialsalone does not cause a child to commit a violent act,” he said. “Exposure to violent materials probably is not even the most important factor.”

However, he added, “Exposure does seem to correlate with aggressive attitudes, insensitivity to violence and an exaggerated view of how much violence occurs in the world.”

Assumptions Slowly Revised

The longstanding debate dates back to congressional hearings first held in the ’50s, followed by a 1972 Surgeon General’s report on “Television and Social Behavior” and a report a decade later by the National Institute of Mental Health.

“Ten years ago, the questions were still, ‘Does it have any influence?’ Now, the conversation starts from the assumption it does,” says psychologist David Walsh, president of the National Institute on Media and the Family. “It wasn’t until there were literally hundreds of studies that people were willing to move beyond that question.”

Last month, four public health heavyweights — the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent psychiatry — announced that as far as they were concerned, the case was closed.

In a joint statement to Congress, they flatly stated that watching violent entertainment can lead to “increases in aggressive attitudes, values and behavior, particularly in children.”

“Its effects are measurable and long-lasting,” they said.

The FTC’s concern about the effects of film, music and video games on children are largely based on extrapolating what we know about the effects of television violence. Early research into video games is already following the same pattern, experts say.

“It’s modeled behavior,” explains Dina Borzekowski, a professor of pediatric health at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City who has conducted research on media’s effect on children as young as preschoolers. “Whether it is visual or auditory does not seem to matter.”

Different Study Models Concur Many so-called correlational studies over the years have found a strong link between the use of violent entertainment media and later violent behavior. But these were vulnerable to the industry defense that their products merely attracted people with violent tendencies, as opposed to causing the aggressive behavior.

So scientists performed what are known as interventional studies as well, allowing a group of children to view a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle kickboxing an opponent into oblivion, for example, and noting that later, those children were more likely than their peers to try it out on the schoolyard.

Recent studies have given select students violent video games to play, and found the games made those students think and act more aggressively.

Most disturbingly, research has found that kids who already have violent tendencies experience the biggest effects from using violent media. “It takes a trait they already have and accentuates it,” Walsh notes.

Findings Disputed But some dispute whether these lab findings hold true in the “real world,” and whether they truly lead to more serious acts of violence — or may even avert them.

Jib Fowles, a professor of communications at the University of Houston-Clear Lake, argues in his 1999 book The Case for Television Violence that watching violence serves as a therapeutic outlet for a child’s emotional well-being.

“People, especially young males, have to deal with the aggressive feelings they have,” Fowles says. “This fantasy content we’ve developed in the 20th century allows them a harmless way for them to release those impulses.”

After all, humanity’s inherent violence has been existent ever since the first caveman picked up a club, long before network TV sprung up.

And because there are so many other possible factors mixed up with cases of violence, blaming the media exclusively can get murky.

“I am concerned that such sweeping generalizations would be made in their public summaries, without indicating the number of factors that are involved as contributors to or possible causes of violence,” says Lewis Lipsitt, a professor emeritus in psychology at Brown University in Providence, R.I., commenting on the medical group’s consensus.

But Pitofsky says that just because other factors may also play a role, the media shouldn’t be off the hook. “To me,” he told an assembly of attorneys general last year, “that is an argument for doing nothing.”