Are we making ourselves more violent?

Photo: By Takeaway (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

     Despite the influence of society and culture, man, on certain incidents, act contrary to what is expected of him. This is what we are seeing now on many schools today. It is difficult to be certain whether a man’s action is the result of his environment or whether his action is merely a reflection of the society. In general, a society does influence the individual; but the true question lies in whether it is the society which has made the individual to do certain actions that are out of the ordinary.

            In 1960 a study was conducted among 8 year-olds to know the connection between children’s viewing of violence on TV and their levels of aggression. Ten years later, following up on the experiment, those who initially manifested “low aggressiveness” at age 8 but watched high levels of TV became more aggressive at age 19. Twelve years later, still under the same experiment, those who watched TV more became even more aggressive especially under the influence of alcohol. Moreover, they are harsher in disciplining their children, and were convicted in more serious crimes. In another experiment done in the 1970s using first and second grades, it was found that aggressive behavior increased by 160% after the introduction of TV.     

            In July of 2000 the American Medical Association, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the American Psychological Association made a joint statement concluding that in over 1000 studies made there are numerous proof connecting media violence with aggressive behavior in children. Based on these premises, on the thousands of studies conducted over a period of several decades, the shootings in schools committed by children is one of the effects of media violence on children.

            What is alarming about these studies is the long term effect of media violence of children. If, as the experiment in the 1960s stated, these children grew up committing more serious crimes, then the tragic incidents in many schools is a mere reflection that the society has now turned us into  more violent individuals. And if we further consider the degree of violence in television in the 60s and those that are shown today, then figuratively the killer in this case is one of us, not someone whom we should hate or feel sorry for but someone who could be any one of us. He, as well us the majority of us, is simply a result of the society that have allowed the media to be an integral part of the lives the people without restraining its negative effects to our children.

            When the media showed the manifesto video, the whole world tried to find the answers as to what drove this student to do such unthinkable crime. The answer is not behind those hating eyes and words but in the mere showcasing of the tape to the whole world. Such broadcasting creates a norm of violence among students. That by showing the tape, the media has made the incident and others like it the growing trend in the schools today. It may have stated that such action is unacceptable and even surprising but the mere broadcasting made it a part of what is our school today. Gradually, it is becoming the norm. Further, to the more vulnerable students, such video have inspired nothing more than the glorification of violence.

            Addressing this problem is one of the most significant challenges our nation faces today. The simple and easy route of trying to police the threat that “weird people” pose is not the solution to the problem. It is important to note that the rate of these incidents is alarmingly increasing. As such, there are root causes of this problem, one is media violence, and simply guarding the treat will not end the violence. Further, pursuing this method of strict enforcement of security without addressing the real issue will only result in a creation of a more hostile environment. In turn this hostile environment will create a more aggressive individual among us and the cycle of violence will simply continue to roll over and over until more and more killings will repeatedly happen.

            In the Middle East we see children as young as twelve years old holding real guns instead of toys. We see them living a life of a soldier even when they are not yet in their teens. We see them growing up to become suicide bombers and terrorists later on. When the environment one lives in revolves around violence it is not surprising to see children growing up having violent tendencies. It is the only way of life that they know. That they live and die by the gun is understandably natural. Their way of life is not much different from the ones we are living today. The accessibility of guns in our country definitely contributes to the violence we see from disturbed young students to disgruntled employees. Gun control is another issue that must be addressed in dealing with this problem. Perhaps the real issue about gun control is not that we need guns to protect ourselves but that we should create a safer country so that we no longer need guns for protection.

            Lastly, it is happening here, now, today. Many students are under the same mental dilemma and they need help. Programs must be developed in order to reach out and help these individuals. But most of all we need to examine the values we are passing on to our children. Perhaps by becoming the greatest nation on earth we have forgotten the real values that are necessary in living a happy and fulfilling life. So our children now suffer. Programs developed in helping these individuals without examining our values would be useless. These programs will only help the few but the problem will remain.

            The tragedy in all these is not just the innocent people who die and those who pulled the trigger. The real tragedy is that we see our nation becoming the breeding ground of violence. We need to find meaning in the trend in violence happening in our schools today because only by facing the facts can we fully and finally make the necessary changes. We need to do this so that our schools can again be a learning ground where dreams can come true and not where lives end in a nightmare.