Years back I was discussing violent video games with a friend of mine. I expressed the opinion that violent games are not a prime cause of violence but a distraction from root causes. My friend said “how many studies do you need to prove to you that violent media causes violent kids?”

A good question. And one I couldn’t answer at the time.

Gerard Jones, author of Killing Monsters, insists that the issue is not quantitative but qualitative. That is, most of the studies linking media violence and youth violence are crap. I’m working my way through the book now, but there’s page after page of this:

A 1998 UCLA study has been widely quoted as showing that the average child will have seen 6,000 violent deaths on television by the time he leaves elementary school.  On closer examination, that number turns out to be the number of violent deaths a child could see if he watched all the violent programs available to him — if he watched more hours of Homicide than Rugrats. [ Killing Monsters, Gerard Jones, p. 54 ]

The study is measuring availability in the general culture, not actual youth exposure:

When children’s viewing habits are taken into account, we discover that most children probably see no  violent deaths through their first six or so years, then a modest number when they start to take an interest in more adult programs and movies. [ Ibid. ]

There’s also “violent acts” as well as violent deaths. This epinions article from 2001 has an astonishing number:

Did you know that by the time the average child finishes elementary school, they have viewed as many as 100,000 violent acts on television? [ The Electronic Babysitter ]

Of course, “violent acts” can be broadly defined to inflate that number. Gerard Jones again:

…a 2001 Harvard study announced that 60 percent of video games rated “E” (for everyone) included violence. But the violence turns out to include Pac Man eating ghosts and Gex the cartoon geko tail-whipping skeletons. [ Killing Monsters, Gerard Jones, p. 55 ]

According to Jones, other studies involved showing kids violent images without context under uncomfortable laboratory conditions, then insisting the children play with children they’ve never met. Or they interpreted aggressive play acting (pretend shooting, etc) as “violent,” even if neither the intent nor result of the act was injury. One study showed children a video of someone hitting an inflatable clown, then concluded the media caused violent behavior because those children then proceeded to punch their own inflatable clowns.

This doesn’t mean media violence has no effect on children, but it does suggest that the effect is not as well understood as we’ve been led to believe. It also certainly suggests that popular ideas about youth exposure to media violence are exaggerated.

And, Gerard suggests, under the right circumstances there are beneficial results from exposure to media violence (and violence in childhood fantasy) that we haven’t begun to explore because it’s always assumed violence is bad.