There is consistent evidence that violent imagery in television, film and video, and computer games has substantial short-term effects on arousal, thoughts, and emotions, increasing the likelihood of aggressive or fearful behaviour in younger children, especially in boys.
Funny, but when I was growing up in TV's dark ages, cartoons were almost uniformly violent. Popeye the Sailor would get beaten to a pulp by Bluto until he ate his spinach and gave Bluto back the beating, with interest. The Warner Brothers cartoons - Bugs Bunny and those guys - all had significant violence as part of the plot. Tom and Jerry. The Three Stooges.
And when we were done watching violence on TV, we'd go get our cap pistols and toy rifles and play cowboys 'n Indians or pretend we were WW II soldiers launching an invasion against a Jap island (that sandbox on the other side of the bushes served as an island), and when we got tired doing that, we'd go back inside and play with our little plastic soldiers. The best Christmas present I ever got as a boy was a gigantic box of Civil War soldiers, complete with an exploding bunker (spring-loaded) and
cheval de frises for impaling men on. I remember one Reb soldier who'd been molded to be wounded - propping himself up with one arm, holding his other hand to his forehead. I found a bottle of red Testor's modelling paint and poured it all over him. It was so cool...
And of course, we had our plastic models. I built a model of the British battleship
HMS King George V, as well as all manner of fighter jets and bombers, most of which eventually were lost in battles with firecrackers.
And of course, I built plastic models of legendary movie killers such as Dracula, the Wolf Man, Frankenstein, The Mummy, and The Creature From the Black Lagoon.
Violence on TV and in the movies? We grew up on
Bonanza, the saga of rancher Ben Cartright and his three sons, where you could count on at least one of those three worthies shooting someone dead every week.
Gunsmoke's opening sequence showed Marshal Matt Dillon gunning down a bad guy. We loved those shows. Violence in the movies? Can you say "John Wayne"?
And all those things I listed above - all my friends did them, too. We were normal suburban kids. Given that upbringing, it seems remarkable that none of us grew up into homicidal killers.
I don't watch cartoons much any more (does
South Park count?), but I get the impression that what's on today is a lot more sanitized, neutered, if you will, than what I used to see. I
know kids don't play cowboys and Indians any more; very few of them even have cap pistols or toy guns of any kind. I doubt that kids build plastic models much any more. So one would think that the current generation would be much less violent than mine.
And yet if you look at the crime statistics today compared with fifty years ago, only a fool would say there's less crime today. So I dispute the claim that "violent imagery in television, film and video, and computer games has substantial short-term effects on arousal, thoughts, and emotions, increasing the likelihood of aggressive or fearful behaviour in younger children, especially in boys." The only medium of exposure to violence that kids have today that I didn't is the computer. And, as explained above, I was exposed to violence in lots of other ways that today's kids aren't.
