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'How does a young man who has grown up with action movies and video games suddenly change his viewing habits when he has a 2-year-old -Sr. Mary Ann Walsh
As shocking episodes of youth violence unfold in one all-American community after another - Pearl, Miss.; Paducah, Ky.; Littleton, Colo.; and now Conyers, Ga. grief and incomprehension fuel a demand for answers, an explanation of how young people from seemingly good homes and average backgrounds could commit such astonishingly brutal deeds.
Video games, TV shows and movies, music and Web sites that celebrate violence figure high on the list of the usual suspects.
By any measure, these forms of popular culture have an enormous impact on shaping the imaginations of young people. Yet for some who study the situation in times of calm as well as crisis, the predictable thrust and parry of media critics and defenders that follow the latest tragedy often raises all the wrong questions.
Suspicions of direct cause-and-effect are important. Did scenes of a student shooting his classmates in the movie "The Basketball Diaries," for example, push a given child to walk into school and start shooting? However, experts say such thinking may obscure the more pervasive social effects of violent programming.
The 'mean world' syndrome
"The impact may not be on potential perpetrators, but on the rest of the population, who begin to believe that violence is inevitable, that crime is everywhere and that they must be afraid," said Sr. Elizabeth Thoman, a member of the Sisters of the Humility of Mary and executive director of the Center for Media Literacy in Los Angeles, Calif.
Thoman's center produces media literacy programs for schools across the country.
She said the public fear generated by media violence - the "mean world" syndrome shows up in all sorts of socially toxic ways, from a diminished sense of community to "tough on crime" legislation, from barred doors to the death penalty.
Perspectives such as Thoman's, however, have been largely shunted to the sidelines in the aftermath of Littleton and now Conyers, Ga., where six students were injured May 20 when a sophomore opened fire.
In the wake of the Littleton shootings, most commentators directly implicated movies, music, video games and the Internet in the...