Television And Violent Crime

　　Children are born ready to imitate adult behavior.That they can imitate an array of adult facialexpressions have been demonstrated in newborns asyoung as a few hours old, before they are even oldenough to know that they have facial features. It is amost useful instinct, for the developing child mustlearn and master a vast repertoire1 of behavior inshort order.

　　But while children have instinctive desire to imitate, they do not possess an instinct fordetermining whether a behavior ought to be imitated. They will imitate anything, includingbehavior that most adults regard as destructive and antisocial2. It may give pause forthought, then, to learn that infants as young as fourteen months demonstrably observe andincorporate behavior seen on television.

　　The average American preschooler watches more than twenty-seven hours of television perweek. This might not be bad if these young children understood what they were watching. Butthey don’t. Up through ages three and four, most children are unable to distinguish fact fromfantasy3 on TV, and remain unable to do so despite adult coaching. In the minds of youngchildren, television is a source of entirely factual information regarding how the world works4 .There are no limits to their credulity. 5 To cite one example, an Indiana school board had toissue an advisory to young children that, no, there is no such thing as Teenage Mutant NinjaTurtles6. Children had been crawling down storm drains looking for them.

　　Naturally, as children get older, they come to know better, but their earliest and deepestimpressions are laid down at an age when they still see television as a factual source ofinformation about the outside world. In that world, it seems, violence is common and thecommission7 of violence is generally powerful, exciting, charismatic, and effective. In laterlife, serious violence is most likely to erupt at moments of severe stress — and it is preciselyat such moments that adolescents and adults are most likely to revert to8 their earliest, mostvisceral sense of the role of violence in society and in personal behavior. Much of this sense willhave come from television.