FREE ESSAY ON VIOLENT WORLD

VIOLENT WORLD

Let's face it, we live in a violent world. We can see it in many aspects of our
surroundings, and if we miss it we have a chance to see it played out again and again in
the media. There have been countless books and studies on violence in our society and on
how to prevent it and what it all means; there will, no doubt, be countless more. But
this book is about how that violence, as it is dramatized on-screen in all its various
forms, affects our children and conditions them to be more violent than they would
naturally become without being exposed to it. Many have reduced this issue to a
chicken-and-egg question: does violence on-screen make people violent, or is that
violence merely mirroring what is actually taking place every day on our streets and
around the world? We think the former, and we have the evidence to prove it. The point is
that kids are not naturally violent; they are not born that way, despite what we may
think. There are many factors in what makes anyone violent, but the overwhelming proof
says that the entertainment industry, through violent programming and video games, is
complicit in conditioning our youth to mirror the violence they see on-screen. Much like
soldiers, children can and do become learned in this behavior, not by drill sergeants and
trained military professionals, but by what they see around them. It seems logical to
most of us but is still hotly contested by certain interest groups, and especially in the
many levels of the
entertainment industry.
But before we present the facts on the negative effects of screen violence on
children--how and why it is making them violent--we need to first look at the overall
trends of violence at home and abroad--our culture of violence. Essentially, around the
world there has been an explosion of violent crime. Experts may disagree on what the
statistics mean--many even suggest that all is getting better, not worse--but, in spite
of vastly more effective lifesaving technology and techniques, as well as more
sophisticated ways of battling crime, the rate at which citizens of the world are
attempting to kill one another has increased at alarming rates over the years. According
to InterPol, between 1977 and 1993 the per capita serious assault rate increased: nearly
fivefold in Norway and Greece; approximately fourfold in Australia and New Zealand; it
tripled in Sweden; and approximately doubled in Belgium, Denmark, England-Wales, France,
Hungary, Netherlands, and Scotland. In Canada, per capita assaults increased almost
fivefold between 1964 and 1993. And in Japan, in 1997, the juvenile violent crime rate
increased 30 percent.
First and foremost, we must cut through the statistics, which are often easy to misread,
and demonstrate just how violent we are and what kind of world our impressionable
children are growing up in. Any discussion of the effects that screen violence has on our
children must be seen through the lens of our society at large. Also, in order to tackle
the seemingly insurmountable problem of violence in our world, we must first see what's
actually going on. If we can't be convinced that the rate of violence is increasing, we
are not, obviously, going to make a priority of tackling the issue. No problem means no
need for a solution.
According to FBI reports, crime is down 7 percent. We are experiencing a slight downturn
in murders and aggravated assaults, bringing us back to the crime rates of about 1990.
But that is far from the full story. To gain a useful perspective on violent crime--among
both youths and adults--the view must cover a long enough time period to clearly identify
a trend. Up or down variations over a year or two are meaningless.