Kids Who Watch Violence on TV May Become Aggressive Teens

TOPLINE:

In adolescent boys, exposure to violent television content during their preschool years is associated with increased levels of self-reported proactive aggression, physical aggression, and antisocial behavior by the age of 15 years; however, no such association has been observed in girls.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers conducted a prospective longitudinal study to explore the potential associations between exposure to violent TV content during early childhood and the development of antisocial behavior during mid-adolescence.
• They examined 963 girls and 982 boys from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development birth cohort in Canada; parents of the included participants reported the frequency of their children’s exposure to violent TV content at the ages of 3.5 and 4.5 years using a Likert scale ranging from 0 (never) to 3 (often).
• Indicators of antisocial behavior (proactive aggression, reactive aggression, physical aggression, and antisocial behavior) were self-reported by participants at the age of 15 years, with responses available for 72.27% of the study population.
• Statistical analyses were used to determine whether exposure to violent TV content at the ages of 3.5 and 4.5 years could predict the occurrence of antisocial behavior 11 years later.

TAKEAWAY:

• Between the ages of 3.5 and 4.5 years, the majority of girls had no exposure to violent media, whereas many boys had been exposed to it at varying levels.
• In boys, exposure to violent content at the ages of 3.5-4.5 years was associated with increased levels of self-reported proactive aggression, physical aggression, and antisocial behavior by mid-adolescence (all P
• No such association was observed in girls.
• Compared with lower exposure to TV violence, early exposure to violent content predicted a 6.5% unit increase in the levels of proactive aggression (P = .043), a 7.4% unit increase in the levels of physical aggression (P = .021), and a 7.6% unit increase in the levels of antisocial behavior (P = .013) during mid-adolescence.

IN PRACTICE:

“Our study provides compelling evidence that early childhood exposure to media violence can have serious, long-lasting consequences, particularly for boys. This underscores the urgent need for public health initiatives that target campaigns to inform parents and communities about the long-term risks and empower them to make informed choices about young children’s screen content exposure,” the lead author commented in a press release.

SOURCE:

This study was led by Linda S. Pagani, PhD, School of Psychoeducation, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada. It was published online on January 20, 2025, in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

LIMITATIONS:

Causal inferences could not be made due to the nonexperimental nature of this study. The measurement of violent TV exposure using a single-item measure may have introduced subjectivity and recall bias. The authors could not determine whether these data accurately represented real-life exposure to violent content in children.

DISCLOSURES:

This study did not receive any external funding. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.