Does Media Cause Mass Killings?
How do serial killers and mass shooters arise? Are they born that way? Is it a result of their childhood and upbringing? Or is it a result of the books they read, the movies they saw, the music they listened to, and the video games they played? Does violence in media cause violence in real life?
Yes and no.
People aren’t born murderers of innocent people just for fun. There’s no evolutionary advantage to kill another member of your tribe for no reason. There can be an advantage to kill members of an opposing tribe in competition for scarce resources. The victims of serial killers are not competition for food, water, or shelter, but they are in competition for another resource valuable to human beings: attention.
It can be easy to blame violent movies and video games-and they do play a role-but the real reason serial killers and mass shooters kill innocent people is because they feel like they are not a member of the same tribe as the rest of society. That results in either severe depression, causing one to kill themselves and/or severe hatred and blame, causing one to kill others because they feel rejected, not being accepted into the tribe. They have no tribe. No one in society is giving them any notice or attention. Evolutionarily, a lone human without a tribe could not survive in the wild. We are psychologically wired to need a tribe, and if we don’t have one, psychological problems ensue.
Evolutionary psychology can explain why these desperate loners who have been routinely rejected by society become suicidal and lash out at the society (or tribe) that rejected them. Part of the motivation is nature, but as for the specifics of how these people lash out (ritualized serial killing or mass public shootings), that may be more a case of nurture.
Media can inspire these broken people. They see a serial killer movie that inspires them to kill others in a similar fashion. Or they see a school shooter on the news and get the idea to try that too-and attempt to outdo them. Again, what these people most desire is attention. If they commit a mass shooting, they are guaranteed worldwide attention. The bigger the atrocity, the more attention they’ll receive. There’s no question in these cases that violent media inspired their violence. Media-that is news media-is the motivation for these mass shooters. They crave media attention.
Yet the media continues to give them exactly what they want by having 24/7 news coverage of every mass shooting, broadcasting the killer’s name and photograph worldwide. If the media truly wanted to diminish mass shootings, they’d spend less time focused on banning guns and video games and more time looking in the mirror at their own practices. Obviously, they have to report on a mass shooting when it occurs-it is news-but they don’t need to reveal the killer’s name or photograph. That would remove the prime motive for mass shooters-media attention.
Though, to be fair, the media itself is not entirely to blame. These people were already psychologically broken from being ostracized by society before being inspired by mass shootings in the news. That’s why most people who play violent video games aren’t violent.
Society needs to stop blaming media for violence in society and start blaming society itself. We need to find these troubled people earlier and give them help-make them feel like an accepted member of the tribe. A happy member of a tribe will never kill a fellow member of their tribe.
These mass shooters and serial killers were not doomed to murder from birth. Sure, many of them have natural tendencies toward psychopathy, but most psychopaths are not murderers. Not if they receive attention from family and friends that care for and support them. Not if they feel like a wanted member of the tribe.
Originally published at https://steemit.com on November 1, 2019.
