Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

Author:Lt. Col. Dave Grossman [Grossman, Lt. Col. Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8041-3936-6
Publisher: Potter/TenSpeed/Harmony
Published: 2014-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

Once the external influences “get inside” of us, it can be confusing. We can’t always identify an external influence as a “cause” of our actions. The two may have been directly related, but we may never connect them. The only thing we can do is to strive to be more conscious about what influences us to become the type of person we want to be. That means we must spend time in reflective thought. We have to “mind meander” to put influences in perspective. When kids are with screen technologies five to eight hours a day, they don’t have enough time to be within themselves—to consider how violent images may be impacting them and their developing sense of self.

Mass media, by its very nature, focuses kids’ attention on the external world. Take time to daydream? Who has time? Understand what you are saying to yourself? Why do that? Filling kids’ lives with iPad apps and video games distracts them from self-reflection opportunities. When children are given time to go “inside themselves” without need of any external stimulation, they come to value their own thinking processes and capabilities in important ways. Too much time with externalized images on screens prevents children from knowing themselves. And they can’t value what they don’t know.

As youngsters grow into school-age children and school-age children mature into teens, the more time they spend with screen technologies, the more their lives are filled with violent images. They have little or no time to process these images and consider how the images are affecting them. If the research is true, very few parents are talking with their kids about the impact of media violence.

FROM IMITATION TO IDENTIFICATION: HOW MEDIA VIOLENCE IMPACTS SELF-IDENTITY

Let’s look at how a steady diet of media violence—with images that are not adequately processed, either by the child alone or with a caring adult—affects children and teens at the following stages of development.

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