Public attention to youth violence is typically brief, stimulated by dramatic events such as school shootings, followed by much blaming, but is rarely followed by sustained examination of etiology, cost, and prevention. Public concern about the association between media violence and children's aggression has actually waned with time, despite considerable concern in the 1970s. Public belief in the association between media (i.e., TV, movies) violence and aggressive behavior by children and adolescents, as reflected in magazine and popular press articles, was more certain in the mid-1970s than today, despite both experimental and correlational studies confirming a moderate association between the two, a linkage about as strong as that between smoking and lung cancer (Bushman & Anderson, 2001).

More surprising, a recent behavioral science text expressed doubt about any relation between video violence and aggression in adolescence. Meanwhile, increasing public acceptance of more graphic forms of media violence, and an insatiable hunger for novel forms of violence, perhaps best seen in the sales and enthusiasm generated over mature-rated video games, may reflect a fascination for actions far beyond the experience of everyday life. Gradual acceptance of media violence may be similar to gradual adaptation to the danger of violence in countries at war, or acceptance of violence in war zones that are present in some dangerous cities; there each act of violence is followed by a quick recovery and return to “normalcy.”