Marketing Violence: The Special Toll on Young Children of Color

Journal of Negro Education, The, Fall 2003 by Levin, Diane E, Carlsson-Paige, Nancy

IMPLICATIONS FOR CHILDREN'S DEVELOPMENT, LEARNING, AND BEHAVIOR

Researchers have concluded that violence is a learned behavior and that the foundations for later aggressive behavior are established by about age 8; that is, patterns of aggression at age 8 are positively correlated with aggressive behavior in adulthood (Eron & Slaby, 1994). Researchers have come to explain how violence is learned by talking about "risk factors" (American Psychological Association, 1993). Risk factors are those aspects of children's lives that undermine their healthy development such as poverty, family violence, and racism. Media violence has also been identified as a risk factor in children (Garbarino, 1999). The more risk factors accumulate in a child's life, the more that child is at risk for becoming violent.

The concept of "accumulated risk" can help explain the differential impact of media violence on children's behavior. How much media violence impacts individual children will depend on not only quality and quantity of children's exposure to media violence, but also on the extent to which other risk factors are present in any child's life. While most children have some risk factors in their lives, low-income children generally have the most and are, therefore, more at risk of being negatively affected by the violence they see in the media.

Media violence has become a more significant risk factor for children since the deregulation of television in the 1980's and the escalating marketing of violence that has followed. Children are exposed to more and more media violence in more aspects of their lives and at younger ages (Rideout et al., 1999).

What children see shapes their developing ideas about how people treat each other and how the social world works. They build their ideas over time through a long, slow process of construction in which new ideas and skills continually build on earlier ones. Children take what they have seen and heard, in direct experience and in the media, and try it out in their play and interactions with each other. As they try it out, they learn lessons about how to behave. They will bring this violence into their interactions with others; violence then becomes one of the building blocks of their social development. Teachers began expressing growing concern about the effects of media violence starting soon after the deregulation of television (Carlsson-Faige & Levin, 1987). They reported both an increase in violent behavior and the presence of more imitative, violent play among children. In one study, we found that over 90% of teachers (representing a wide range of socioeconomic and racial groups) believed that the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers were contributing to violent behavior and play among children in their classrooms (Levin & Carlsson-Paige, 1995).

We can better understand why marketing violence to young children has become such a big risk factor in their lives if we understand what makes them especially vulnerable to its impact.

THE SPECIAL IMPACT OF MEDIA IMAGES ON YOUNG CHILDREN