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Violence and Effects on Children
1. Violence in America: History
The common dictionary definition of violence runs
something like the following: ‘exertion of physical
force so as to injure or abuse.’ The inclusion of ‘abuse’
in the definition is important, because it opens up the
issues of force being used to induce negative psycho-
logical states and to violate basic human dignity.
Thus, violence includes the range of behaviors that
assault or batter, that induce fear or terror, and that
demean and humiliate.
Understanding the effects of violence on children
demands an interdisciplinary perspective, one that
incorporates psychological, biological, sociological,
anthropological, and historical insights within the
context of a larger ecological model. Anchoring this
issue is the fact that each year in the United States
nearly 5,000 children and youth commit acts of lethal
violence, half against others (murder) and half against
themselves (suicide). The numbers of children and
16184
youth who commit potentially lethal acts is, of course,
many times greater, what with the tens of thousands of
‘serious assaults’ and ‘suicide attempts’ that take place
each year involving minors. For each of these kids,
and for the families, communities and societies of
which they are a part, this problem of violence
constitutes a crisis.
The current crisis of these kids is not historically
new, however. Writing in Ju
enile Justice Update in
1997, Robert Shepherd points out that the New York
Times 140 years ago editorially bemoaned the fact that
‘the number of boy burglars, boy robbers and boy
murderers is so astoundingly large as to alarm all good
men.’ He offered the following analysis from a child
psychiatrist working in Manhattan for the Juvenile
Court in the 1950s: ‘At first it comes as a shock to meet
youngsters under 16 who rob at the point of a gun,
push dope, rape and kill. I’ve seen boys of 7 so small
they could barely clear the desk who had sold
themselves to sex perverts. Others had shot out kids
eyes or had clubbed or knifed them, just for the fun of
it.’ And the statement is from an article entitled
Manhattan’s Child Criminals Are My Job in the
Saturday E
ening Post of March 27, 1954. Recall that
in the mid-nineteenth century, the governor of New
York had to call out the militia to deal with rampant
youth gangs in New York City.
2. Violence in America: Today
While there are historical dimensions to the current
situation, there are features of the contemporary
situation that are distinctive as well. For one thing, we
must recognize that the magnitude of the problem is
different today. There has been a seven-fold increase in
per capita aggravated assault rates among youth in the
United States since 1956. Also, kids are being tried as
adults and incarcerated correspondingly, in what
seems like a macabre return to the medieval concepts
of children as simply little adults. But the parallel is
even more subject to documentation than that. The
homicide rate in the city of Amsterdam in the year
1450 is estimated to have been 150 per hundred
thousand. By 1850, when Amsterdam had been ‘civil-
ized,’ the rate dropped to 2 per hundred thousand.
This rate might be taken as a kind of base line for the
minimum expectable homicide rate, the rate we find in
most of the modern and relatively affluent countries in
the world. But in the US we continue to find rates of 20
per hundred thousand and in the most oppressed
social environments within our society we find rates of
160 per hundred thousand!
Homicide rates provide only an imprecise indicator
of the overall problem of violence in the lives of
American children and youth, however, for behind
each murder stand many nonlethal assaults. This ratio
varies as a function of both medical trauma technology
(which prevents assaults from becoming homicides)
 Violence and Effects on Children

and weapons technology (which can increase or patterns are no more likely that children in general to
decrease the lethality of assaults). An example from develop conduct disorder.
Chicago illustrates this: the city’s homicide rate in
1973 and 1993 was approximately the same, and yet
the rate of serious assault had increased approximately 4. Children in War Zones
400 percent during that period. Thus, the ratio of
This is highly significant because it is from the ranks of
assaults to homicides increased substantially—from
children with conduct disorder that most chronic
1:100 in 1973 to 1:400 in 1993 (Garbarino et al.
violent delinquents come (about a third of such
1992).
children emerge as chronic violent delinquents ac-
Class, race, and gender exert important influences
cording to a variety of studies—cf. Loeber and
on exposure to community violence. The odds of being
Farrington 1997). Child abuse and community vi-
a homicide victim range from 1:21 for Black males, to
olence are rampant in the lives of kids who become
1:369 for white females—with white males at 1:13
violent youth. This is one of the most important effects
and Black females at 1:104 (Bell and Jenkins 1993).
of violence on children. My own research illuminates
Being an American itself is a risk factor. As noted
these links through intensive, multiple interviews with
above, the US far exceeds all other modern industri-
boys involved in lethal violence (Garbarino 1999), and
alized nations in its youth homicide rate (even for
highlights the importance of geographic concentra-
young whites, where the rate of 11.2 per 100,000 is far
tions of violence that create ‘war zone’ like settings for
more than the second place country, Scotland, with
children. These are the social settings in which the
5 per 100,000 (Richters and Martinez 1993).
rates of child victimization is highest (with child
maltreatment rates many times higher than in other
neighborhoods—Garbarino et al. 1992) and from
which most lethal youth violence comes (Snyder and
3. Exposure to Violence as an Influence on Sickmund 1999).
De
elopment Children living in neighborhoods which simulate
war zones are exposed to high levels of violence. A
Having established this historical and social context,
survey of sixth to 10th graders in New Haven,
what next becomes clear is that understanding the
Connecticut, revealed that 40 percent had witnessed at
effects of violence on children is very much a matter of
least one incident of violent crime within the previous
recognizing the developmental links between early
12 months (Marans and Cohen 1993). In three high
experiences of violence as a victim and later experi-
risk neighborhoods in Chicago, 17 percent of the
ences of violence as a perpetrator. This developmental
elementary school age children had witnessed dom-
relationship exists both within the lives of individual
estic violence, 31 percent had seen someone shot, and,
children and across the generations in families. Re-
84 percent had seen someone beat up (Bell and Jenkins
search indicates that inside virtually every dangerously
1993).
violent youth is an untreated traumatized child, a child
Some 30 percent of the kids living in high crime
with experiences of violent victimization, and that the
neighborhoods of major metropolitan areas like
there is substantial cross-generational continuity in
Chicago have witnessed a homicide by the time they
violence within families.
are 15 years old, and more than 70 percent have
Research by psychiatrists Perry et al. (1995) and van
witnessed a serious assault. These figures are much
der Kolk (1996) has begun to illuminate the neuro-
more like the experience of kids in the war zones we
logical processes that translate early trauma into
have visited in other countries (Garbarino et al. 1991)
later dangerous behavior through brain development
than they are of what we should expect for children,
and neurochemistry. Dodge et al. (1997) have further
living in ‘peace.’ Richters and Martinez (1993) have
elaborated this link by documenting the adaptive
amplified these results. In their study, 43 percent of the
processes that link the experience of violence as a
fifth and sixth graders had witnessed a mugging in a
young child to the development of a pattern of
‘moderately violent’ neighborhood in Washington,
aggressive antisocial behavior as an elementary
DC. Other researchers echo these findings (e.g.,
school-age child. Their research reveals that the
Taylor et al. 1994).
problems comes when abused children develop four
particular psychological adaptations (hypersensitivity
to negative social cues, obliviousness to positive social 5. Children Adapt: For Better and For Worse
cues, a readily accessible repertoire of aggressive
behavior, and a belief that aggression is a successful Children adapt to their perception of community
strategy in social relations). Such children are seven safety in many important ways. One is their view of the
times more likely than abused children who do not future. A Harris poll of sixth to 12th graders in 1992
develop these patterns to end upon diagnosed with revealed that 35 percent worried they would not live to
‘conduct disorder’ (chronic aggressive and antisocial old age because they would be shot (Harris et al. 1994).
behavior). Abused children who do not develop these In our interviews with families living in public housing

16185
Violence and Effects on Children
projects in Chicago we learned that virtually all the
children had first-hand experiences with shooting by
the time they were five years old (Dubrow and
Garbarino 1989). A six-year-old girl once said that her
job was to find her two-year-old sister whenever the
shooting started and get her to safety in the bathtub of
their apartment. ‘The bathroom is the safest place,’
she said. Interviews with school-age children and
youth confirm that the ‘gun culture’ is a potent factor
in the life of children in diverse settings in the US
(Garbarino 1995, 1999). Teen use of guns in homicides
increased from 64 percent in 1987 to 78 percent in
1991. During the same period, teen arrests for crimes
involving weapons increased 62 percent (Snyder and
Sickmund 1995).
When children understand that adults cannot pro-
tect them they are left with what we might call juvenile
vigilantism, the impulse to protect themselves, to take
up weapons and relationships that substitute for adult
protection. This is evident in comments from children
and youth such as ‘If I join a gang I’m 50 percent safe.
If I don’t join a gang I’m zero percent safe’ (Garbarino
1999). Adults don’t enter into the equation.
6. Risk Accumulates
The key to understanding the effects of living in a war
zone is the recognition that these children do not
simply face a single threat to development, a solitary
risk factor. Rather, they face multiple risk factors, a
fact of overarching importance in light of research by
Sameroff et al. (1987) documenting the cumulative
effect of risk factors. In Sameroff ’s study, while the
presence of one or two risk factors was generally
manageable for children, the presence of three or more
risk factors was associated with significant devel-
opmental impairment. These are the children of
greatest concern to us, the children who face major
accumulations of risk factors, and who are thus most
at risk for the psychological effects of trauma due to
violence.
Tolan (1996) examined this phenomenon in detail in
a study in a Chicago-based study in which he asked the
question, ‘What percent of kids are resilient if we
measure resilience as neither requiring mental health
intervention or remedial education?’ When he asked
that question of data from boys growing up in the
most afflicted war zone neighborhoods of Chicago,
living in abusive and impoverished families, contend-
ing with minority status in a racist society, and looked
at this kids over a two-year period, the answer was
zero percent. None of the children by age 15 were
resilient in Tolan’s terms. This testifies to the effects of
violence when they occur within a larger context of
social and psychological risk accumulation. The re-
lentless pressure imposed on kids who come from that
nexus of community violence, family disruption, and
personal experience of trauma is uniformly over-
whelming.
16186
7. Future Directions
As research on the impact of violence on children
matures it turns increasingly to studies of the con-
ditions under which alternative pathways are taken by
affected children. Why do some child victims become
adolescent perpetrators while others do not? How can
early intervention change these pathways? How signif-
icant are the neurobiological effects of early trauma?
These and other questions will require many years of
sustained research to address adequately. Unfortu-
nately, the world shows no signs of preventing child-
hood exposure to violence, so these questions must be
answered.
See also: Childhood Sexual Abuse and Risk for Adult
Psychopathology; Domestic Violence: Sociological
Perspectives; Early Childhood: Socioemotional Risks;
Violence in Anthropology; Violence: Public; Street
Children: Psychological Perspectives; War, Political
Violence and their Psychological Effects on Children:
Cultural Concerns
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Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd.
All rights reserved.
Violence and Media
Public and academic concern about media’s con-
tribution to real world violence are about as old as the
mass media and the social sciences themselves
(Wartella and Reeves 1985). Despite frequent framing
of the matter as ‘controversial,’ extensive research—an
estimated 3,000 (Donnerstein et al. 1994) to 3,500
(Wartella et al. 1998) studies in the United States
alone—have examined the impact of media violence,
and a number of recent major reviews (Huston et al.
1992, Murray 1994, see also Potter 1999, Paik and
Comstock 1994, Comstock and Paik 1991), have
concluded that media violence plays a measurable role
in real-world violence. A variety of US agencies,
including the Centers for Disease Control of the US
Public Health Service (1991), and medical and public
interest organizations, including the American Medi-
cal Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics,
and the National Conference of Parent-Teacher As-
sociations, have identified media violence as a public
health problem. The review below focuses most
heavily on US research and US media, most notably
American television, primarily because a large ma-
jority of the published social science research on media
and violence is US research on American audiovisual
media. Potter (1999, pp. 44–5), for example, reports 42
published content analyses of US television since 1954,
and just 19 from the rest of the world. Moreover,
American media are among the world’s most
violent—and most exported—and real-world violence
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
Violence and Media
is a recurring public policy issue. Further, much of this
literature concerns impacts of media violence on
children and adolescents, for the inter-related reasons
that young audiences are considered the most im-
pressionable and most vulnerable. Adults are generally
viewed to be more resistant to the deleterious in-
fluences of violence, and, as some would argue (cf.
Huesmann 1997), violent behaviors in adulthood may
be traced to media use during childhood.
1. Theories of Effect
Three models have been proposed to describe the
process by which such learning and imitation of media
violence occurs: social learning theory, priming effects
theory, and a social developmental model of learning
(Wartella et al. 1998).
First proposed by Albert Bandura in the 1960s,
social learning theory is the best known theoretical
account of violence effects. Bandura asserts that
through observing television models, viewers come to
learn behaviors which are appropriate, that is, which
behaviors will be rewarded and which punished. In
this way, viewers seek to attain rewards and therefore
imitate these media models. When both children and
adults are shown an aggressive model who is either
rewarded or punished for their aggressive behavior,
models who are positively reinforced influence imi-
tation among the viewers. Even research in the field
has demonstrated that aggression is learned at a young
age and becomes more impervious to change as the
child grows older. In a longitudinal study to examine
the long-term effects of television violence on ag-
gression and criminal behavior, Huesmann et al.
(1984) studied a group of youth across 22 years, at ages
8, 18, and 30. For boys (and to a lesser, though still
significant extent for girls), early television violence
viewing correlated with self-reported aggression at age
30 and added significantly to the prediction of serious
criminal arrests accumulated by age 30. These re-
searchers find a longitudinal relationship between
habitual childhood exposure to television violence and
adult crime and suggest that approximately 10 percent
of the variability in later criminal behavior can be
attributed to television violence.
Priming effects theory serves to augment the more
traditional social learning theory account of television
violence effects. In the work of Leonard Berkowitz
and his colleagues, this theoretical account asserts that
many media effects are immediate, transitory, and
short-term (Berkowitz 1984). Berkowitz suggests that
when people watch television violence, it activates or
‘primes’ other semantically related thoughts which
may influence how the person responds to the violence
on television. Viewers who identify with the actors on
television may imagine themselves like that character
carrying out the aggressive actions of the character on
television, and research evidence suggests that ex-
posure to media aggression does indeed ‘prime’ other
16187
ISBN: 0-08-043076-7