WNT: Transcript

Feb. 9, 2001 -- Cornell University professor James Garbarino talked with ABCNEWS' Bill Redeker about school violence. This is a transcrip of his interview.

James Garbarino: The biggest change is that kids around the country have a better appreciation that they have some responsibility for letting people know when they find out dark things about other kids and that is the surest way to prevent or thwart these things before they happen.

WNT: What is the impact of Columbine on school security?

James Garbarino: The impact was that it changed the conscientiousness of adults and kids all over the country. It's a bit like what happened with some of the high visibility child abuse cases. People, physicians, counselors who 40 years ago who worked with kids but never saw a child abuse case all of a sudden now can see it in front of their eyes.

The lens through which people view disturbing behavior on the part of kids has changed and that is why some of these incidents are coming to fruition.

WNT: At the same time, what has not changed among kids?

James Garbarino: What hasn't changed is the underlying dynamic that's producing the violence. That is, we have twice as many kids who are seriously troubled as we did 25, 30 years ago and those kids have access to a widerange of dark images, on the Internet, through the videos, video games. All that is a very dangerous combination which we are seeing week after week.

WNT: What's driving this pheomenon of kids trying to kill kids?

James Garbarino: I think that the underlying causes haven't changed because we really haven't done enough to provide mental health services in the schools and because the nastiness and viciousness of the imagery kids are exposed to. If anything, it has gotten worse. Some of these kids are idolizing Eric and Dylan and it's almost like a second generation of the dark side of adolescent culture coming about and we really haven't found an effective way to intervene and put a stop to it.

It's difficult to understand where such deep anger comes from considering so many of these kids are just barely in their teens.

I think the core issue is the fundamental attraction teenagers have to melodrama. That's why melodramatic movies whether it's Romeo and Juliet or Titanic have such tremendous appeal to teenagers. So that's sort of the normal side of this. The Internet just makes it very easy for troubled, isolated kids around the country to have a sense of connection. Forty years ago if you were a seriously disturbed, troubled kid you'd have a hard time getting together a group of peers to do this.

Today you can get validated over the Internet in a much more efficient way and it provides access to all sorts of images that kids in small towns for example might never have had before. Now they can participate in the dark side. And for troubled kids, that can lead to troublesome behavior.

WNT: How serious is this problem for society today?

James Garbarino: Well, to begin with there literally are more disturbed kids today. The rate of kids troubled enough to need professional mental health services about doubled from the early 1970's when it was about 10 percent, to about 20 percent today. And that means the market for these disturbing images has increased..and younger and younger kids have unlimited access to the world...they log onto cable tv, they have unlimited access to video-game arcades, suggestive movies and television. All contribute to the violence phenomenon.

WNT: But where does the anger come from in the first place?

James Garbarino: I think the anger comes from the sense of frustration and entitlement so many kids have, you know their expectations for the level of gratification in their lives has increased dramatically.You know the old saying how do you keep them down on the farm when after they've seen Paris, this is kinda a distorted version of that. Kids want to feel as powerful as World Wrestling Federation wrestlers, as dominating as Rambo, as sexually active as kids from Dawson Creek and when their real lives don't match up they feel frustration, they feel a sense of deprivation. And parents and teachers are failing to train kids to lower or have more modest expectations.

As a society, we really haven't done much and evidence of that is the fact that troubled kids are still walking down this dark pathway.