It is now entirely clear that exposure to media violence is an important causal factor in aggressive behaviour in children and adults. Exposure to media violence desensitizes people to the effects of violence on its victims and induces callous atti tudes. The hero and his or her colleagues foil the evil forces, often by high technology violence. This version is common to many children's shows. If one wanted to devise strategies for the socialization of young children to accept war, militarism and highly violent conflict resolution, it would be hard to arrive at better ways.
Some cultures teach their values predomi nantly through stories.
The stories our culture chooses to tell its children and adolescents repeatedly extol the use of violence in response to problems. Many young children consider war to be heroic, exciting and fun. Many of these programmes promote toy weaponry, action figures, clothes, lunch boxes etc. These objects may act as cues for the scripts they relate to, and the violent conflict resolution they represent. Recent wars against Panama and Iraq, as examples, were presented to the North American public very much according to this script, involving serious distortions of reality.