Statement of Joanne Cantor, Ph.D.
Professor Emerita
University of Wisconsin-Madison
before the
United States Senate Commerce Committee
Subcommittee on Science, Technology, & Space
Washington, D.C.
April 10, 2003
Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to present my views on the media's impact on children. Since 1974, I have been a professor at the University of Wisconsin, focusing the greater part of my research on the impact of media violence on children's aggressive behaviors and emotional health. My book, "Mommy I'm Scared": How TV and Movies Frighten Children and What We Can Do to Protect Them, helps parents protect their children from the effects of media violence. Finally, and not the least important in terms of expertise, I am the mother of a fourteen-year-old son.
We now know a lot about the effects of media violence. Study after study has found that children often behave more violently after watching media violence. The violence they engage in ranges from trivial aggressive play to injurious behavior with serious medical consequences. Children also show higher levels of hostility after viewing violence, and the effects of this hostility range from being in a nasty mood to an increased tendency to interpret a neutral comment or action as an attack. In addition, children can be desensitized by media violence, becoming less distressed by real violence and less likely to sympathize with victims. Finally, media violence makes children fearful, and these effects range from a general sense that the world is dangerous, to full-blown anxieties, nightmares, sleep disturbances, and other trauma symptoms.
The evidence about these effects of media violence has accumulated over the last few decades. Meta-analyses, which statistically combine all the findings in a particular area, demonstrate that there is a consensus on the negative effects of media violence. They also show that the effects are strong - stronger than the well-known relationship between children's exposure to lead and low I.Q. scores, for example. These effects cannot be ignored as inconclusive or inconsequential.
Even more alarming, recent research confirms that these effects are long lasting. A study from the University of Michigan shows that TV viewing between the ages of 6 and 10 predicts antisocial behavior as a young adult. In this study, both males and females who were heavy TV-violence viewers as children were significantly more likely to engage in serious physical aggression and criminal behavior later in life; in addition, the heavy violence viewers were twice as likely as the others to engage in spousal abuse when they became adults. This analysis controlled for other potential contributors to antisocial behavior, including socioeconomic status and parenting practices.
The long-term effects of media on fears and anxieties are also striking. Research shows that intensely violent images often induce anxieties that linger, interfering with both sleeping and waking activities for years. Many young adults report that frightening media images that they saw as children have remained on their minds in spite of their repeated attempts to get rid of them. They also report feeling intense anxieties in nonthreatening situations as a result of having been scared by a movie or television program - even though they now know that there is nothing to fear. [For example, you might find it logical that many people who have seen the movie Jaws worry about encountering a shark whenever they swim in the ocean. But you would be surprised to learn how many of these people are still uncomfortable swimming in lakes or pools because of the enduring emotional memory of the terror they experienced viewing this movie as a child.]
These long-term reactions of increased aggressiveness and lingering fear raise important questions about the processes involved in media effects. The fact that a child might imitate a wrestling move he has just seen on TV is not that surprising. Nor is it difficult to explain why a youngster might have a nightmare after watching Psycho or Poltergeist or Scream. But the fact that the negative effects of media violence are so enduring indicates that we need to explore these processes more deeply. We need to know what's happening to children's brains as they watch media violence and what kinds of lasting changes occur.
Some encouraging findings are beginning to emerge from research teams headed by John Murray at Kansas State University and by Vincent Matthews at Indiana University Medical School, with funding from the Center for Successful Parenting. By mapping the areas of the brain that are influenced by violent images, these studies promise to help us understand how media violence promotes aggression and to help explain why it has such enduring effects on emotional memory.
What can government do about the problem of media violence?
Congress has already provided help by mandating the V-chip and TV ratings so that parents can have some idea of what's in a program before their child watches it. This is an enormous first step, but currently each mass medium - TV, movies, music, and video games - has its own distinct rating system. Parents need better information, and they would certainly benefit from having one easily understood rating system that would apply to all media.
Congress has already conducted hearings regarding the media industries' aggressive marketing of violent programming to children. These hearings have resulted in many promises on the part of industry executives and some movement in the direction of curbing these excesses. But Congress should continue to keep tabs on these activities.
Congressional hearings have also had a positive effect by keeping the issue of media violence in the news and helping to educate parents about the potential risks of media to their children. Anything else the government can do to help educate parents on this matter would provide enormous benefits.
What Congress can do in addition is provide funding for more research on this topic - especially research on the neurobiology of brain reactions and on the relationship between media violence exposure and children's mental and physical health.
We must not lose sight of the stakes here. A great deal has changed in the past generation or two. Our children are spending much more time with media than we did, and what they are exposed to is more violent, more graphic, and now, with video games and computers, more interactive than we ever imagined. Our children's heavy immersion in today's media culture is a large-scale societal experiment with potentially horrifying results (and with hardly a child left behind to serve in the control condition). The time is now to put serious resources into understanding what we are doing to our children and into finding ways to ensure their welfare and that of society as a whole.
You can find these ideas and arguments in more detail on my web site (www.joannecantor.com). Of course, I will be happy to answer your questions. Thank you again for your sincere and continuing interest in this matter.
Related References
Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2001). Effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal, and prosocial behavior: A meta-analytic review of the scientific literature. Psychological Science, 12, 353-359.
Black, S. L., & Bevan, S. (1992). At the movies with Buss and Durkee: A natural experiment on film violence. Aggressive Behavior, 18, 37-45.
Bushman, B. J., & Anderson, C. A. (2001). Media violence and the American public: Scientific facts versus media misinformation. American Psychologist, 56, 477-489.
Cantor, J. (2003, May). "I'll never have a clown in my house": Frightening movies and enduring emotional memory. Paper accepted for presentation at the Annual Conference of the International Communication Association. San Diego.
Cantor, J. (1998). "Mommy, I'm scared": How TV and movies frighten children and what we can do to protect them. San Diego, CA: Harcourt.
Cantor, J. (2002). Fright reactions to mass media. In J. Bryant & D. Zillmann (Eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research (2d ed., pp. 287-306). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Cantor, J. (2002). Whose freedom of speech is it anyway? Remarks at Madison (WI) Civics Club, October 12, 2002. http://joannecantor.com/Whosefreedom.html
Center for Successful Parenting (2003). Can violent media affect reasoning and logical thinking? http://www.sosparents.org/Brain%20Study.htm
Harrison, K., & Cantor, J. (1999). Tales from the screen: Enduring fright reactions to scary media. Media Psychology, 1 (2), 97-116.
Huesmann, L. R., Moise-Titus, J., Podolski, C., & Eron, L. (2003). Longitudinal relations between children's exposure to TV violence and their aggressive and violent behavior in young adulthood: 1977-1992. Developmental Psychology, 39, 201-221.
Johnson, J. G., Cohen, P., Smailes, E. M., Kasen, S., & Brook, J. S. (2002). Television viewing and aggressive behavior during adolescence and adulthood. Science, 295, 2468-2471.
Kirsh, S. J. (1998). Seeing the world through Mortal Kombat-colored glasses: Violent video games and the development of a short-term hostile attribution bias. Childhood, 5 (2), 177-184.
Lemish, D. (1997). The school as a wrestling arena: The modeling of a television series. Communication, 22 (4),395-418.
[Matthews, V. P.] (2002). Violent video games trigger unusual brain activity in aggressive adolescents. http://jol.rsna.org/pr/target.cfm?ID=94
Murray, J. P. (2001). TV violence and brainmapping in children. Psychiatric Times, XVIII (10).
Owens, J., Maxim, R., McGuinn, M., Nobile, C., Msall, M., & Alario, A. (1999). Television-viewing habits and sleep disturbance in school children. Pediatrics, 104 (3), 552, e 27.
Paik, H., & Comstock, G. (1994). The effects of television violence on antisocial behavior: a meta-analysis. Communication Research, 21, 516-546.
Simons, D., & Silveira, W. R. (1994). Post-traumatic stress disorder in children after television programmes. British Medical Journal, 308, 389-390.
Singer, M. I., Slovak, K., Frierson, T., & York, P. (1998). Viewing preferences, symptoms of psychological trauma, and violent behaviors among children who watch television. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 37 (10), 1041-1048.
Twenge, J. M. (2000). The age of anxiety? Birth cohort change in anxiety and neuroticism, 1952-1993. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 1007-1021.
Zillmann, D., & Weaver, J. B. III (1999). Effects of prolonged exposure to gratuitous media violence on provoked and unprovoked hostile behavior. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29, 145-165.
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