Since then, of course, things have gotten much worse. In recent decades there has been a worldwide explosion of violent crime. Per capita assaults in Canada alone went up almost fivefold between 1964 and 1993. Although medical advances in the past fifty years have decreased the rate at which violent acts lead to death, we have failed to reduce the extent to which violence is used to resolve conflict in the first place. While it is frequently acknowledged that the United States now has the highest rate of imprisonment of any industrialized nation in the world, it should also be noted that they are the world leader in production and distribution of cultural products.
Children are our canaries in the coal mines.
Videogames in particular, given their interactive nature, are actually teaching them the very mechanics of killing. Over the past 50 years, there have been thousands of studies pointing toward harmful effects of media violence. It is also important to be aware of the relative meaninglessness of focusing on the harmful effects of one medium to the exclusion of others. They do reinforce each other, particularly when thematic material is similar. Furthermore, researchers have found that it is possible to extrapolate the findings from one medium and apply them to another.