Violence, the Media and Symbolic Interactionism

We as American’s are constantly exposed to violence, when we turn on the television or open the newspaper we are bombarded with news of violence. We watch movies and television shows filled with shootings and other violence. This mass exposure has changed the way we perceive violence. In sociological terms the symbolism of violence has been altered. We have been desensitized to violence thus altering the way we view violence. Dave Grossman argues that this is something that has long been used in the military to train soldiers to perform their duty, however these same techniques have been used unintentionally on the general population which more drastic effects. Because this desensitization is taking place during childhood rather then in late teens and early twenties, the social constraints that are normally emplace to prevent people from acting out such as norms and sanctions have not been instilled the same way they would be in a 18 or 19 year old. The results have been a drastic increase in violence.

“The Journal of the American Medical Association published the definitive epidemiological study on the impact of TV violence. The research demonstrated what happened in numerous nations after television made its appearance as compared to nations and regions without TV. The two nations or regions being compared are demographically and ethnically identical; only one variable is different: the presence of television. In every nation, region, or city with television, there is an immediate explosion of violence on the playground, and within 15 years there is a doubling of the murder rate. Why 15 years? That is how long it takes for the brutalization of a three to five-year-old to reach the "prime crime age." That is how long it takes for you to reap what you have sown when you brutalize and desensitize a three-year-old.”(Grossman)

A Symbolic interactionist would describe this change as being a result of a societal change in how we perceive violence, it changed from being something that was socially unacceptable to something that we have been desensitized to because of our constant exposure and now perceive as common place and nearly acceptable.

“When young children see somebody shot, stabbed, raped, brutalized, degraded, or murdered on TV, to them it is as though it were actually happening. To have a child of three, four, or five watch a "splatter" movie, learning to relate to a character for the first 90 minutes and then in the last 30 minutes watch helplessly as that new friend is hunted and brutally murdered is the moral and psychological equivalent of introducing your child to a friend, letting her play with that friend, and then butchering that friend in front of your child's eyes. And this happens to our children hundreds upon hundreds of times.” (Grossman)

This exposure at such young ages alters our values and norms. The constant exposure creates the understanding that violence is a normal thing, when we watch our favorite characters in movies and TV shows use violence as a solution it changes symbolically; we also begin to accept it as a solution.