Creative Speculation
In reply to the discussion: Question to speculate: " Where does a 12 year old get the idea to stab her brother & kill him?" [View all]happybird
(5,346 posts)I (kinda) disagree. I think it may not make them violent, per se, but it desensitizes them to violence, makes it seem commonplace and normal.
Many years ago (early 2000’s) I worked a lunch shift, only, so was home in the late afternoon which was an unusual occurrence at that time in my life. I plopped down in front of the tv when I got home. It was a weekday, about 4:30 in the afternoon, so prime after-school tv watching hours. NCIS (maybe CSI, it one of those two shows) was on. There was murder scene they were working on. It was in an elevator and the body was gruesome. Graphically disemboweled, very gory. I vividly remember being shocked that not only was this being shown on regular tv in the afternoon, but also at how explicitly gory and accurate looking it was. TV wasn’t like that when I was growing up in the 80’s and 90’s.
There have been other changes that I think are desensitizing younger generations to violence. They may seem small, but all together, it’s a lot.
Remember how they never, ever killed pets in movies or on tv shows? Except Dan and Ann in Where the Red Fern Grows and Old Yeller, of course. But that’s why those two books/movies are so memorable to people GenX and older. It was not common. It was freakin’ traumatic. Now they kill pets in movies regularly, just for the shock value. In fact, the shock value has worn off for most folks at this point. Desensitized.
The same with children dying in movies/tv. It used to happen offscreen. Now it doesn’t.
Video games have become so realistic looking. I was looking for a match up between two particular MMA fighters on YouTube and kept clicking on video game footage and not realizing it wasn’t real, actual footage. It was frustrating. I cannot even imagine how graphic some of the shooter games get.
The change of horror movies into graphic, drawn out torture porn. Bodies being shown on the news. The internet which allows access to anything you want to see. Kids are curious and I’m sure they are viewing some horrible videos of suicides and snuff films, whether real or staged. It’s so easy to access now.
Plus, the press coverage of every mass shooting. It’s a lot and it’s everywhere. And we used to only get local news so coverage of horrible, violent crimes was pretty much limited to what happened in your neck of the woods. Now, we get news from every corner of the planet, all day and all night long, and if it bleeds, it leads. We are inundated with violence and stories of the horrible things humans do to one another. I don’t think it has ever been like this before.
These are just some things I think about when I see news stories like the two mentioned above.
The kids are desensitized.
Edit to Add: Wasn’t going to put this down, but why not? It’s my past and I am proud to have gotten away from it. Desensitization is how I ended up being an IV drug user.
At first, it was shocking when I saw people using needles. Absolutely shocking. But as the days and weeks went by, as I saw the circle of people I was hanging out with shoot up, it became “normal” to me. No big deal. Sure enough, I started doing it too because it was no longer shocking, no longer abnormal. It’s just what people did, or so I thought. And I was the kid who literally hid from the pediatrician when it was time to get the tine test for TB or vaccine boosters. I was terrified of needles to the point the ER staff restrained me when I had to get stitches when I was 10. But after being around it and getting used to seeing it everyday it became “normal” in my head. I think this is what is happening to young people with violence and disregard for life.
Edit history
Recommendations
0 members have recommended this reply (displayed in chronological order):![](du4img/smicon-reply-new.gif)