News headlines about youth violence sporadically rear their ugly head, as they did again this week about a 12-year-old boy who faces adult murder charges for allegedly shooting and killing his pregnant step-mother-to-be following some disagreements.
We can’t know all the specifics of this particular tragedy. But we can use it as an opportunity to shake ourselves awake again. We must not just ask “Why?” and forget about it, but rather focus with steadfast commitment on what we all can do to prevent such senseless acts of violence.
The Problem
Juvenile violence erupts not from a single cause, but from many causes. Simplistic blaming of one factor or another is pointless. Instead, research has repeatedly shown that several major factors often combine to lead to youth violence.
1. Strong feelings and poor coping skills. Children act out violently when they feel intense anger, anxiety, or hopelessness, and when they have little other coping resources available. Violent acts occur when a child has poor impulse control, poor judgment, or poor abilities to think through alternative ways of expressing their upset feelings. Often these acts are desperate attempts to gain control in an environment the child sees as hostile and beyond his or her control.
2. History of aggression. A violent youth has often gotten away with or been rewarded for low-level aggressive behaviors. That is, the child has gotten some desired results – be it possessions, attention, peer status, or self-esteem – from threatening or acting out in an aggressive way.
3. Aggressive role models. If the child hasn’t been directly reinforced for these behaviors, they may have witnessed others succeeding with violence. They may have directly experienced violence in the home or community. Or they may have been exposed to high doses of violence in the media.
4. Media overload and desensitization. The odds of youth violence increase when a child’s social life is overflowing with a media diet centered on violent video games, movies, and internet sites. Over time, the child becomes numb to the real pain and suffering associated with actual human violence. They become desensitized to it, and real shootings can become surrealistic extensions of video game adventures.
5. Access to weapons. Finally, violent injuries and deaths increase remarkably when children have easy access to lethal weapons. The easier the access to guns and knives, the easier it is for senseless, stupid mistakes or misdeeds to occur. This isn’t a moral or political argument; this is a simple, common sense fact.
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