Kids Killing Kids
Dave Muskera, M.A.
December 12, 2007
Somewhere in my distant past, I was employed as senior psychologist for a boy’s psychiatric residential treatment center in a rural mid-western state. My young wife and I lived in staff housing on the Center’s multi-acred campus. Our work focused on a population of about sixty seriously disturbed adolescent boys ranging in ages from ten or so to about eighteen. They came in a variety of models from pint-sized kids to bruiser who looked as if they were about to be drafted into the NFL. It was an open campus with lots of grass, fields and trees surrounding the dorms and staff housing. No gates and no locks. We provided for all the boy’s needs including a specialized accredited education program and individual/group therapy. I was a relatively inexperienced therapist, but in the two years spent there, I learned a lot about teenagers and a lot about my skills and limitations. I also had my first hard lessons in the impact of how “observing violence” could lead to the acting out of aggression.
Now, some 35 or 40 years later, we are witnessing a phenomena that, as far as I can tell, is new in the behavioral repertoires of our “children”. A certain small percentage of kids and young adults have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to blast away with guns at others, killing age peers and adults indiscriminately and often with no specific targets. What’s more, they seem able to do so with little or no show of emotion. Then, just as often, they go down in a hail of defensive gunfire or put the gun to their own heads ending their lives and leaving us forever guessing about their motives.
I’m not a historian in any major sense of that word. But in my research I have yet to uncover evidence establishing that kids use to kill kids with what we now see to be a terrible regularity. Certainly, we have always had angry, bitter and disenfranchised adolescents. While this is a sad reality, it is not new. But kids like this in the 1860s or 1920s or 1950s did not typically pick up an AK-47 (or whatever was available) and burst with guns blazing into a classroom or the equivalent of a department store mall.
So what has changed? What is there now that’s different from the "then". That’s different about the environment kids grow up in today as opposed to times past? Is there a simple answer to all the deadly violence? Well, that’s not likely. Human behavior of this type is most often the result of some complex interaction of determinants, regardless of what simplistic explanations might appear in media the day after a violent event. Still, we cannot ignore the growing body of research that points to a link between the acting out of aggression and violence and the influence of such things as movies, video games and even song lyrics. And, I propose, all of these things are indeed “new” in our kid-raising environment - and mostly all in the last 40 or so years.
I’m not going to try to make a case that violence on TV, in the movies etc. seriously impacts all kids and rots their brains. No, I really don’t think that’s the case. But there are kids and young adults who have always been “marginally adjusted” and who, when exposed repeatedly to violence, can become desensitized to the gore and blood so often seen in today’s action movies and games. These kids can literally act-out the role of some demonic executioner they might have played in the vivid real-to-life world of a video game. Repeated exposure to hyper stimulation leaves them nearly emotionless or so hyped on adrenaline that seeing the brains and blood of their victims splattered on a wall leaves them unmoved, or worse yet, elated.
This lesson about the relationship between observed and acted-out violence is not a new one for the behavioral sciences. Psychologists and others have been warning of this connection for years. However, the entertainment industry has discovered the animal bloodlust of the human species and panders to it because it makes money. Ask yourself which type of firm typically brings in the most revenue. An action packed, bloody and graphic thriller-horror flick, or a thought provoking, well-acted dialoged based firm? Be honest. In particular, American movie going audiences (as well as some other countries) seem addicted to action, blood and gore.
The lesson I learned - the hard way - at the boy’s residential treatment center mentioned above was indeed the one about violence observed and violence acted-out. When you get sixty young males together living in a two dorms, group acting out behavior can become intense and often times dangerous. After a few months at the Center, I began to notice the cycles of trouble that occurred in the dorms at night and at other times. Child Care workers would sometimes be attacked and on occasion there were injuries and property damage. Daytime classroom behaviors were also often overly aggressive (even beyond expected baselines) and the general atmosphere of the campus could become tense for no immediately apparent reason.
We began discussing this problem at weekly staffing and discovered that our child care workers were often taking the boys to violent dramatic movies on the weekends. Most often the boys wanted to see the 1960s equivalent of the Texas Chain Saw Massacres if it was showing in town. Invariably, when the guys were taken to violent content movies, some of them, but not all, tended to act out afterwards sometimes for days. As a result, the campus could literally bristle with free floating hostility. After making this “connection”, we initiated a planning and pre-approval requirement for in-town movies. This helped reduce some of the violence on campus or at least limited it to causes we could more readily identify. Some of our boys had simply grown up in angry dysfunctional families and violence was their second language. Remember also, in those years we did not have to deal with graphically violent video games, the Internet or even much violence on TV or in music lyrics.
I can’t help but reflect on my own growing up years. My family did not even get a television until 1953. I was ten years old. Certainly there was nothing violent (unless you count The Three Stooges) on our old black and white. I suppose I saw my first man gunned down by the Lone Ranger. At the movies and in early TV, when a cowboy was shot, he simply fell off his horse or doubled over while collapsing to the ground. No blood, no spattered internal organs in sight. No close-ups of colorful gaping wounds. No real opportunity, thank god, for desensitization to gore. It would be years later that I’d first hear about kids having “gross-out parties” where they would watch videos or whatever with delight as chain saws ripped through naked flesh and guns decimated heads. The goal was to be the last person standing in the room. I don’t think kids need these gross-out parties anymore. Many of them seem to have become desensitized to the potential reality of human suffering. Now, our culture has even come to the place were we argue over what constitutes torture. It’s as if we can no longer see the line between abuse of human flesh and other forms of interrogation.
All too often, those teetering on the brink of mental illness find a gun to be a handy device for working through alienation and anger. After all, they have probably seen it done a thousand times in vivid detailed hi-def color.
Well, unfortunately the clock can not be turned back. As much as we might want to, there is really no way to stuff all this entertainment violence back in the bag to keep it from poisoning or warping young minds. Our culture is obsessed with it and far too much money is in the balance for those who produce what the public apparently wants.
While I don’t believe there is yet evidence to suggest that all or even many who watch blood and gore for “fun” become maniacal killers, I do have concerns about just how far we have gone as a culture in parading before our eyes and ears the worst behaviors our species produces. And doing so because of its entertainment value!
Except for our cell phones, iPods and airplanes, we seem little different than those who gathered in the Roman Coliseums to watch and cheer as human victims were torn to pieces by lions. Little different from the crowds who gathered at the foot of now ancient jungle pyramids to watch as blood flowed from decapitations and other human sacrifices. I worry about all the crappy images that get into the minds of people. I worry about the desensitization to human suffering. It is not all just good clean fun and harmless games.
But I am in no way greatly surprised when I pick up a newspaper or click on an Internet story about this or that young person who took a gun and, in a fit of quite range, killed all they could before putting a bullet through their own fevered brain. At such times, I am mostly reminded of my boys at the psychiatric center from years ago.
As long as violence is glorified, I’ll be sadened but not surprised by such events. We’ll simply have to learn to accept, as collateral damage, the loss of a few school kids or whoever. It’s really just the price of doing business in the modern world. No? Do we have any alternatives?
Now, some 35 or 40 years later, we are witnessing a phenomena that, as far as I can tell, is new in the behavioral repertoires of our “children”. A certain small percentage of kids and young adults have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to blast away with guns at others, killing age peers and adults indiscriminately and often with no specific targets. What’s more, they seem able to do so with little or no show of emotion. Then, just as often, they go down in a hail of defensive gunfire or put the gun to their own heads ending their lives and leaving us forever guessing about their motives.
I’m not a historian in any major sense of that word. But in my research I have yet to uncover evidence establishing that kids use to kill kids with what we now see to be a terrible regularity. Certainly, we have always had angry, bitter and disenfranchised adolescents. While this is a sad reality, it is not new. But kids like this in the 1860s or 1920s or 1950s did not typically pick up an AK-47 (or whatever was available) and burst with guns blazing into a classroom or the equivalent of a department store mall.
So what has changed? What is there now that’s different from the "then". That’s different about the environment kids grow up in today as opposed to times past? Is there a simple answer to all the deadly violence? Well, that’s not likely. Human behavior of this type is most often the result of some complex interaction of determinants, regardless of what simplistic explanations might appear in media the day after a violent event. Still, we cannot ignore the growing body of research that points to a link between the acting out of aggression and violence and the influence of such things as movies, video games and even song lyrics. And, I propose, all of these things are indeed “new” in our kid-raising environment - and mostly all in the last 40 or so years.
I’m not going to try to make a case that violence on TV, in the movies etc. seriously impacts all kids and rots their brains. No, I really don’t think that’s the case. But there are kids and young adults who have always been “marginally adjusted” and who, when exposed repeatedly to violence, can become desensitized to the gore and blood so often seen in today’s action movies and games. These kids can literally act-out the role of some demonic executioner they might have played in the vivid real-to-life world of a video game. Repeated exposure to hyper stimulation leaves them nearly emotionless or so hyped on adrenaline that seeing the brains and blood of their victims splattered on a wall leaves them unmoved, or worse yet, elated.
This lesson about the relationship between observed and acted-out violence is not a new one for the behavioral sciences. Psychologists and others have been warning of this connection for years. However, the entertainment industry has discovered the animal bloodlust of the human species and panders to it because it makes money. Ask yourself which type of firm typically brings in the most revenue. An action packed, bloody and graphic thriller-horror flick, or a thought provoking, well-acted dialoged based firm? Be honest. In particular, American movie going audiences (as well as some other countries) seem addicted to action, blood and gore.
The lesson I learned - the hard way - at the boy’s residential treatment center mentioned above was indeed the one about violence observed and violence acted-out. When you get sixty young males together living in a two dorms, group acting out behavior can become intense and often times dangerous. After a few months at the Center, I began to notice the cycles of trouble that occurred in the dorms at night and at other times. Child Care workers would sometimes be attacked and on occasion there were injuries and property damage. Daytime classroom behaviors were also often overly aggressive (even beyond expected baselines) and the general atmosphere of the campus could become tense for no immediately apparent reason.
We began discussing this problem at weekly staffing and discovered that our child care workers were often taking the boys to violent dramatic movies on the weekends. Most often the boys wanted to see the 1960s equivalent of the Texas Chain Saw Massacres if it was showing in town. Invariably, when the guys were taken to violent content movies, some of them, but not all, tended to act out afterwards sometimes for days. As a result, the campus could literally bristle with free floating hostility. After making this “connection”, we initiated a planning and pre-approval requirement for in-town movies. This helped reduce some of the violence on campus or at least limited it to causes we could more readily identify. Some of our boys had simply grown up in angry dysfunctional families and violence was their second language. Remember also, in those years we did not have to deal with graphically violent video games, the Internet or even much violence on TV or in music lyrics.
I can’t help but reflect on my own growing up years. My family did not even get a television until 1953. I was ten years old. Certainly there was nothing violent (unless you count The Three Stooges) on our old black and white. I suppose I saw my first man gunned down by the Lone Ranger. At the movies and in early TV, when a cowboy was shot, he simply fell off his horse or doubled over while collapsing to the ground. No blood, no spattered internal organs in sight. No close-ups of colorful gaping wounds. No real opportunity, thank god, for desensitization to gore. It would be years later that I’d first hear about kids having “gross-out parties” where they would watch videos or whatever with delight as chain saws ripped through naked flesh and guns decimated heads. The goal was to be the last person standing in the room. I don’t think kids need these gross-out parties anymore. Many of them seem to have become desensitized to the potential reality of human suffering. Now, our culture has even come to the place were we argue over what constitutes torture. It’s as if we can no longer see the line between abuse of human flesh and other forms of interrogation.
All too often, those teetering on the brink of mental illness find a gun to be a handy device for working through alienation and anger. After all, they have probably seen it done a thousand times in vivid detailed hi-def color.
Well, unfortunately the clock can not be turned back. As much as we might want to, there is really no way to stuff all this entertainment violence back in the bag to keep it from poisoning or warping young minds. Our culture is obsessed with it and far too much money is in the balance for those who produce what the public apparently wants.
While I don’t believe there is yet evidence to suggest that all or even many who watch blood and gore for “fun” become maniacal killers, I do have concerns about just how far we have gone as a culture in parading before our eyes and ears the worst behaviors our species produces. And doing so because of its entertainment value!
Except for our cell phones, iPods and airplanes, we seem little different than those who gathered in the Roman Coliseums to watch and cheer as human victims were torn to pieces by lions. Little different from the crowds who gathered at the foot of now ancient jungle pyramids to watch as blood flowed from decapitations and other human sacrifices. I worry about all the crappy images that get into the minds of people. I worry about the desensitization to human suffering. It is not all just good clean fun and harmless games.
But I am in no way greatly surprised when I pick up a newspaper or click on an Internet story about this or that young person who took a gun and, in a fit of quite range, killed all they could before putting a bullet through their own fevered brain. At such times, I am mostly reminded of my boys at the psychiatric center from years ago.
As long as violence is glorified, I’ll be sadened but not surprised by such events. We’ll simply have to learn to accept, as collateral damage, the loss of a few school kids or whoever. It’s really just the price of doing business in the modern world. No? Do we have any alternatives?
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