Early exposure to violent content linked to violent tendencies in teen boys: Montreal study
Posted January 20, 2025 9:10 am.
Last Updated January 23, 2025 10:43 pm.
Exposure of preschoolers to violent content on screen is associated with an increase in antisocial and violent behaviour among boys in adolescence, warns a new study by a researcher at l’Université de Montréal.
By age 15, boys who have been exposed to this violent content will be more likely to hit or attack another person with the intention of robbing or taking advantage of them; to use threats and insults; to participate in fights between teenage gangs; and to use weapons.
“They were more likely to get into fights, push people around, engage in reactive and proactive aggression. In other words, start fights or fight back,” said said study author and professor Linda Pagani.
The exposure was also associated with court appearances for various crimes, stays in youth centres and interactions with law enforcement.
“Between the ages of four and six, that’s the period when we learn how to interact with others,” Pagani said. “That’s when we’re socialized. And when children are exposed to models that are reinforced with respect to violence and aggression, that’s what happens.”

Pagani and her team studied nearly 2,000 children born between 1997 and1998.
They were born at a time when the only real screens were television screens. Very few families had, say, desktop computers with, because YouTube didn’t exist really at that point in time. And so it’s a very nicely tight, methodologically tight study. Because if we were to do the same thing today, it would be very difficult because screens are ubiquitous. They’re everywhere.
The researchers used data from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development conducted by the Institut de la statistique du Québec to conduct their work. They noted a significant association only among boys, which is not surprising, according to them, since boys are more attracted to fast-paced content of an aggressive nature.
Children exposed to violent television content “become desensitized to aggressive acts and trivialize their consequences,” the authors say. They become “less sensitive to the suffering of others and therefore less empathetic to their pain, and may even develop positive attitudes toward violence.”

The correlation between proactive aggression, physical aggression and delinquency and increased screen time in preschool boys, regardless of violent content, could be explained by the fact that screen time reduces opportunities for social interaction with peers, “which could create a mindset that predisposes affected individuals to resolve social competition, challenges and conflicts with unkind, pessimistic and less tolerant behavior,” the study authors explain.
Exposure to violent content likely leads to aggressive thoughts, feelings of anger, and arousal levels that are influenced by personal and situational factors, which in turn impact appraisal and decision-making processes to determine whether aggressive or non-aggressive behaviors ensue, the study reads.
Vicarious exposure at an age when children do not always have the cognitive ability to differentiate between fiction and reality, it continues, can bias preschoolers’ perceptions and influence how they respond to this violence.
“This leads exposed youth to make more hostile attributions to others and act aggressively in ambiguous social situations because they perceive the world as dangerous,” the authors write. “These socio-cognitive information processes may eventually become entrenched, helping to explain why children exposed to television violence exhibit more antisocial behaviors in adolescence.”
Troubled Teens, Troubled Adults
These troubled teens don’t miraculously transform into well-adjusted adults who make positive contributions to society, the study’s authors warn.
“When these young people have been exposed to a lot of violence and they have started an inappropriate trajectory in their socialization, they are even more attracted to controversy, to drama, because they do not know how to appreciate peace,” explained Pagani. “They are not awake if there is no drama. And when you are aggressive like that, it is difficult to integrate into society.”
Aggressive adolescents have more depressive symptoms and long-term stress, lower self-esteem, less empathy and less life satisfaction in adulthood, the authors write. They are also more likely to have less effective communication skills and lower cohesion with their families, even years after adolescence.
“Externalizing behaviors in adolescence often persist into adulthood, with youth with the highest levels being four to five times more likely to develop disruptive behaviors and emotional disturbances,” the authors note.
Antisocial adolescents are more likely to have substance abuse, anxiety and mood disorders, and impaired social functioning in adulthood, Pagani and her colleagues point out. These effects are all the more serious, they say, because externalizing behaviors begin in childhood and continue beyond adolescence, increasing the risk of psychosocial problems in adulthood.
“The kids that we’re raising today are going to be tomorrow’s parents and tomorrow’s people on the workforce,” Pagani said. “And it might be people’s colleagues, people’s husbands and wives. We want a nice society and we need to project out that way. We need to think about that.”

Parents need to understand that technology is a tool, Pagani concluded. They also need to realize that screens and the content they contain, while they may temporarily hold children’s attention while we go about household chores, can have a harmful impact in the long term.
“Young people are going to have difficulties at work, they are going to have difficulties in their romantic relationships, they are going to have difficulties with the apartment concierge,” she listed. “We absolutely have to ask ourselves right now, is this the kind of society we want, is this what we want for society?”
The findings of this study were published by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews