Especially for Parents

News and Commentary by Sharon Secor
June 2004

Brain Damage

The brain is a complex and delicate instrument, its healthy and complete development a true miracle. The organic, or physical, development of the brain does not stop at birth, but continues well into the adult years. While many parents, educators, researchers, pediatricians, and child development professionals have expressed concern about the influence of media on children's behavior, there is a growing body of evidence that suggests that the relationship between media and behavior is much deeper than mere influence. Researchers are beginning to show actual changes in the way that the brain functions.

And what is going on in children's minds today? According to a widely published Associated Press report by Linda A. Johnson, American parents now spend more money on medication for attention deficit and other behavioral disorders than they do on any other medication, including antibiotics and asthma medicines.

On May 17, 2004, the New York Post, drawing from the same AP story, reported that from the year 2000 to 2003, there has been a 49 percent increase in the use of medications for attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders in preschoolers, which "contributed to a 23 percent increase among all children."

This stunning increase merits concern in and of itself. However, when considered in conjunction with the results of a recent study published in the April issue of Pediatrics, this increase takes on an even deeper meaning. The study was headed by Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician at a Seattle children's hospital, and included the work of researchers from the University of Washington, as well as that of mental health professionals in the Seattle area.

The results of their study demonstrated that for each hour of television watching per day, young children had approximately a 10 percent increase in the chance of developing attention problems. Five hours of viewing per day translates into a 50 percent greater chance of difficulties. Researchers attributed this not so much to content, but rather to the affect of the rapid lights and sounds, the patterns of stimulation, upon the developing brain.

In another story based upon AP writer Linda A. Johnson's article, the Miami Herald reported (registration required) on May 17, 2004, that during the same period of time "antidepressant spending rose by 21 percent, and drugs for autism and other conduct disorders jumped by 71 percent."

A Washington Post story published on April 18, 2004, said that between 1998 and 2002, there was a 50 percent increase in prescriptions for antidepressant medications written for children. Medical News Today was a bit more specific in an April 3, 2004, story that cited results of a study published in the April 2004 issue of Psychiatric Services.

The study, conducted by Express Scripts, "examined antidepressant use among approximately two million commercially-insured, pediatric beneficiaries 18 years and younger from 1998 to 2002," according to Medical News Today. Their researchers found an annual increase of 10 percent in the use of antidepressants by children and teens. They also found that "the fastest growing segment of users were found to be preschoolers aged 0-5 years, with use among girls doubling and use among boys growing by 64%." Another interesting finding is, referring to the group as a whole, "the growth in use was greater among girls (68%) than boys (34%) and, for each gender respectively, growth was higher among younger boys and older girls."

Researchers have often associated media with depression in terms of its psychological influence. The most common example of this association is depression in girls relating to poor body image due to the constant barrage of unrealistic, surgically enhanced, pornified images of women that are promoted as being the height of desirability.

However, there are other studies that also connect media to physical changes in the activity of the brain, one of which was conducted by Dr. Vincent P. Mathews, of the Indiana University Medical School in Indianapolis, and presented to the 88th Scientific Sessions and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

"Hours of playing violent video games can affect the way the brain works on a cellular level, causing misfiring of signals between nerve cells or slowing brain activity," wrote Peggy Peck in her December 2, 2002, UPI article describing the results of Dr. Mathews's study.

Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (MRI) to measure brain activity, Dr. Mathews found that exposure to media violence decreased activity in the frontal lobe, which is the part of the brain that deals with impulse control, attention span and emotions. Frontal lobe disruption has been proven numerous times in recent years to be associated with a variety of cognitive and mood disorders, including those that contribute to clinical depression.

For those children who still manage to make it through the day without prescription drugs, there are also indications of troubling mental states. While increasingly younger children are hip to the social and emotional nuances of 'hooking up' (registration required), knowledgeable about group sex, homosexuality, bisexuality and pornography—no wonder so many are depressed to the point of needing medication to help them struggle through another day—scholastic performance on a national level is disgraceful.

In 1895, according to an 8th grade final exam from Salinas, Kansas, aside from being able to read and perform basic mathematical functions without our modern technological aids, students were expected to have a detailed knowledge of geography, American history, grammar, and orthography. It would be interesting to know how many 8th graders today can define orthography, let alone provide some of the information required on that 1895 final exam—such as definitions and examples of trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, and linguals.

Today, data from the National Center for Educational Statistics tells us that just 29 percent of 8th graders were reading at a level deemed proficient in 2003. Only 23 percent were proficient at mathematics. Not even one-third of 8th graders could write at a proficient level and a mere 15 percent were found to be proficient in American history.

Learning, as researchers are coming to discover, is about more than simply the acquisition of knowledge. An active, learning mind is an important factor in brain health, making actual, measurable physical differences in the brain itself, i.e. an increase in synaptic connections.

Unfortunately, intellectual stimulation does not make up a great part of the popular culture of children and teens. Indeed, the media consumed by our youth is increasingly geared towards stimulating baser desires. Teens and children know the names of the porn stars that are featured in their music videos, that sell them consumer products, and that pose suggestively on huge billboards in major cities.

The pornography that is seeping into popular youth culture today is dangerous on a variety of levels. In terms of the brain itself, Yale researchers found that teens are more vulnerable to forming addictions than adults, according to a Yale news release of June 18, 2003.

Andrew Chambers, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and co-author of this study, which was published in the June 2003 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, explained that this was because the parts of the brain "that govern impulse and motivation are not yet fully formed."

"Particular sets of brain circuits involved in the development of addictions are the same ones that are rapidly undergoing change during adolescence," according to Chambers. He went on to describe a "less mature neurological system of inhibition, which leads to impulsive actions and risky behaviors."

The Yale study addressed addiction to substances, but other addictions, such as to pornography, are also related to those areas of the brain. The operation of the brain is primarily chemical and electrical. Feelings of pleasure, for example, are expressed chemically by the brain. Thus, non-substance addictions elicit chemical responses and do have the potential to alter the chemical balance of the brain.

The Lighted Candle Society, a Utah-based anti-pornography organization, hopes to prove that there are physically measurable changes in the brain caused by addiction to pornography. John Harmer, chairman of the Lighted Candle Society, plans to try to do so through methods similar to those of Dr. Vincent P. Mathews in the study of violent media and the brain.

"If we can use the MRI studies to prove that pornography is addictive, much in the same way that violence has been found to be addictive in previous research, then we can hold them [the pornography industry] financially liable for the harm they are doing, and virtually cripple the industry," Harmer said, as quoted by Brigham Young University News Net staff writer Jonathon Bacon in a May 11, 2004 article.

In the late '90's, Dr. Marcia Herman-Giddens began studying the potential for our highly sexualized media culture to have physical effects on children, specifically on girls. Her interest was piqued when, as a doctor working with children, she noticed the increasing number of little girls entering puberty—beginning breast development and the appearance of pubic hair—at a much younger age than they did a few decades ago.

A 1997 study of more than 17,000 girls throughout the country found that "28 per cent of African-American girls and 7 per cent of white girls had begun breast development and/or had pubic hair, the first markers of puberty, by seven years old. Within a year to two years, almost half of African-American girls and 15 per cent of white girls had started puberty," according to an April 15, 2002, article in the University of Western Ontario Graduate Program of Journalism's Online Reporter.

In an April 29, 2000, New York Times article, titled The Making of an 8-Year-Old Woman, Dr. Herman-Giddens discussed her theories relating to both a sexualized culture and the sexualization of children as being potential factors in the premature onset of puberty. She used the classic example of women who spend a great deal of time together, such as in college dorms, finding that their menstrual cycles begin to coincide as a demonstration of how the female reproductive system can be influenced by external factors.

"If you watch somebody cut a grapefruit from across the room, you're going to salivate," said Herman-Giddens, "which is just one example of how what you see can have a biological effect on your body. We worry about what all the violence is doing to children. Well, what about all the sex? While we're doing all this research, we ought to be researching that."

And, fortunately researchers have been doing just that—researching the physical, biological effects of media, as well as the psychological. Our children are changing, psychologically, intellectually and physically. While certainly there are many factors that influence these changes, media is nearly omnipresent in the lives of many children and teens. Its ability to produce measurable physical effects on the developing brain has just begun to move out of the theoretical realm and into the real world. In the end, we may find that violent, obscene or pornographic media content is just as toxic physically as it is psychologically.