Legislating mythology: Video violence and children

Abstract

Fears that mass media violence is harmful to children and encourages crime and violence can be traced back a century and a half. Each new medium has provided the focus for concerns that there has been a recent and unprecedented rise in juvenile crime and that this has been caused by a new medium which is unprecedented in its glorification of crime and violence. Such concerns are the basis of Newson's (1994) report but appear to be nothing more than speculation fuelled by the popular press.