|
IDENTIFYING WHAT IS
HARMFUL OR INAPPROPRIATE FOR MINORS
White Paper
Submitted to the Committee on Tools and Strategies for Protecting
Kids From Pornography and Their Applicability to Other Inappropriate
Internet Content
Marjorie
Heins, Director Free Expression Policy Project National
Coalition Against Censorship
March 5,
2001
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
I.
THE PRESUMED HARM FROM PORNOGRAPHY AND "OTHER
INAPPROPRIATE INTERNET CONTENT"
A.
The Lack of Scientific Evidence
B.
The Irrelevance and Inconclusiveness of Research on Media
Violence
C.
Difficulties Identifying "Pornography" and "Other
Inappropriate Internet Content"
D.
Morality and Socialization of Youth
II.
ALTERNATIVES TO TECHNOLOGY
A.
Acceptable Use Policies
B.
Media Literacy
C.
Comprehensive Sexuality Education
CONCLUSION
ENDNOTES
INTRODUCTION
The National
Research Council has recognized that "the subject of controlling
children's Internet access to pornography is charged politically and
emotionally in the national debate." It wisely states as its goal
"to provide a foundation for a more coherent and objective local and
national debate on the subject of Internet pornography."1
This White Paper is an effort to contribute to that more coherent
and objective national debate.
Coherence and
objectivity require, at the outset, an assessment of the harm that
is thought to be caused to minors by pornography and "other
inappropriate Internet content." Have adverse effects from
pornography been scientifically identified? Or is the issue
essentially one of morality and socialization of youth? It is
incumbent upon the Committee on Tools and Strategies (hereafter,
"the Committee") to address this question, for it is impossible to
evaluate "tools and strategies for protecting kids" until it is
determined what they are to be protected from. Moreover,
because technological tools such as Internet filters are notoriously
imprecise, the Committee must assess the nature and gravity of the
harm to minors that Congress seeks to address before it can
determine whether such imprecise tools are worth the cost, or
whether affirmative educational strategies might be a more effective
response to society's concerns.
I. THE PRESUMED HARM FROM PORNOGRAPHY AND
"OTHER INAPPROPRIATE INTERNET CONTENT"
A. The Lack of Scientific
Evidence
Experts in human
sexuality agree that there is no body of scientific evidence
establishing that minors are harmed by reading or viewing
pornography. As 16 noted researchers and educators said in an
amici curiae brief to the Supreme Court in the recent case of
United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, "most scholars
in the field of sexuality agree that there is no basis to believe
sexually explicit words or images ... in and of themselves cause
psychological harm to the great majority of young people."2
Jeffrey McIntyre of the American Psychological Association likewise
acknowledges that "the state of psychological research in the area
of children and exposure to pornography is limited."3
In 1986, the
Surgeon General's Workshop on Pornography and Public Health
concluded that there is no scientific basis to believe that minors
are adversely affected by pornography. Indeed, it noted that many
psychologists believe young children are unaffected by pornography
because they lack "the cognitive or emotional capacities needed to
comprehend it." In the end, these experts said, "it is really rather
difficult to say much definitive about the possible effects of
exposure to pornography on children."4
The more widely publicized majority report that same year of the
Attorney General's Commission on Pornography (the Meese Commission)
did not disagree. The Meese Commission acknowledged that its
concerns about minors' access to pornography were based on morality,
not science.5
In the
Playboy Entertainment case, expert witnesses for both the
government and Playboy testified at trial that there is no empirical
body of evidence of harm to minors from exposure to pornography.
(The case involved a challenge to a statute restricting sexually
explicit or "indecent" signal bleed on cable television.) Dr.
Richard Green, founding president of the International Academy of
Sex Research and author of Sexual Science and the Law,6
testified that none of the available literature – including
comparisons of the amount of erotica available in different
countries, studies of sex offenders, laboratory experiments on
pornography and violence, clinical experience worldwide, and
research on people who as children had witnessed the "primal scene"
of sexual intercourse – supports the notion that exposure to sexual
explicitness is psychologically harmful to youth. In 25 years of
clinical practice, Dr. Green had not encountered psychological
problems stemming from pornography.7
The government
in Playboy Entertainment initially attempted to establish
harm to minors by offering testimony from Dr. Diana Elliott, who
operated a clinic for abused children in California. The three-judge
trial court rejected Dr. Elliott's testimony as weak, anecdotal, and
"possibly misleading."8
Later, the government presented a new expert witness, Dr. Elissa
Benedek, who opined that sexually explicit television might produce
an assortment of harmful effects but acknowledged that she knew of
no scientific literature or clinical studies supporting her belief,
and that in her 30 years of psychiatric practice, nobody had come to
her with a complaint about sexual images.9
The judges were unimpressed with Benedek's testimony. "We are
troubled," they wrote, "by the absence of harm presented both before
Congress and before us that the viewing of signal bleed of sexually
explicit programming causes harm to children."10
Although there
is no body of empirical research demonstrating harm to minors from
reading or viewing pornography, some studies have explored
relationships between youngsters' sexual attitudes or behavior and
their viewing of mainstream media. These studies have limited
relevance to pornography, which is a markedly different genre from
mainstream entertainment, with different imagery, messages, and
purposes. Moreover, these studies have not generally demonstrated
harmful effects.
For example, an
experiment in 1980 asked 75 adolescent girls, half of them pregnant,
about their television viewing habits. Overall, the pregnant ones
watched more TV soap operas and were somewhat less likely to think
that their favorite characters would use contraceptives. But as the
authors said, it is "difficult to know if television portrayals are
encouraging adolescents to be unrealistic about sexual relationships
[that is, not using contraceptives], or if unrealistic adolescents
identify with the glamorized TV portrayals."11
Similarly, a 1991 study found that of 391 junior high school
students, those who watched sexier TV shows were more likely to have
become sexually active in the preceding year. Although "having had
intercourse appeared to be related to seeking sexual content on
television," the researchers were "unable to determine which came
first – sexual intercourse or a proclivity for viewing sexual
activity on television."12
Indeed, it is
likely that in both studies, a third variable accounted for the
correlation between sexual activity and viewing of sexually oriented
mainstream programming. Psychologist Jeffrey Arnett, documenting a
correlation between adolescents' reckless behavior and preference
for violent music, found just such an independent factor –
"sensation seeking" – to account for both the preference and the
behavior. Arnett added that "adolescents who like heavy metal music
listen to it especially when they are angry and that the music has
the effect of calming them down and dissipating their anger."13
Experts
presenting testimony to the Committee did not always clearly
differentiate between correlational studies and laboratory
experiments that actually attempt to show causation. Professor Jane
Brown, for example, noted the "‘effects' of mainstream sexual
content" on young people, but three of the four propositions that
followed in her written testimony appear to be based only on
correlational studies.14
The fourth proposition, that "[m]usic video viewing increases
acceptance of premarital sex, interpersonal violence," is based on a
1986 experiment involving 7th and 10th graders who were shown music
videos and then given an attitude questionnaire. Of several
attitudes that the researchers considered "deleterious," they found
a significant effect from the racier video for one – tolerance for
premarital sex. But they phrased their conclusions cautiously,
noting that "[i]t is unclear how long lasting the results obtained
in the present study may be."15
Indeed, scholars generally recognize that lab experiments producing
short-term effects have limited relevance to formation of sexual
attitudes and behavior over the long term, where a wide range of
social and cultural influences interact.
In short, the
evidence on music videos is both sparse and ambiguous. And it has no
meaningful application to pornography.
Correlations do
not establish causation, but they can be suggestive. Studies have
found, for example, an inverse correlation between youthful
exposure to pornography and sex offending among adolescents and
adults. That is, sex offenders generally have less, not more,
exposure to pornography as youths.16
One possible inference is that sex offending is causally related not
to youthful exposure to sexually explicit material but to its
opposite: youthful repression, conflict, and guilt.
A recent study
by Professor Joanne Cantor and her colleagues tried to assess the
effects of minors' exposure to sexual material by asking college
students for their memories of TV shows or movies "depicting sex or
sexual issues" that they had seen as children or adolescents. The
researchers found no clear, consistent effects. About half of the
subjects who viewed "sexual content" as adolescents or earlier
"evaluated the experience as both positive and negative ... Younger
children's responses were significantly more likely to be
characterized by interest or confusion; those of older children were
significantly more likely to be characterized by disgust or
anger."17
None of these results suggests serious or permanent psychological
harm.
By contrast,
Cantor's 1988 book, Mommy, I'm Scared, documented widespread
anxiety reactions among children exposed to such nonsexual (and
relatively nonviolent) TV fare as Little House on the
Prairie, Sleeping Beauty, and Alice in
Wonderland.18
Thus, it is not always easy to predict what literature or
entertainment will actually distress children. Certainly,
pornography has not been a scientifically documented culprit.
B. The Irrelevance and Inconclusiveness of
Research on Media Violence
Conclusions
about harm to minors from pornography cannot be extrapolated from
research on media violence. Although art, literature, and
entertainment affect youngsters in many ways, determining what
specific content produces what specific effects is an extremely
difficult undertaking, and must depend on empirical studies that
focus on the particular content at issue. The trial court in
Playboy Entertainment properly rejected opinions about the
effects of pornography that Dr. Benedek offered based on
extrapolations from a sampling of research on media violence.19
Jeffrey McIntyre's testimony before the Committee suffers from the
same fallacy. Simply positing that "media does influence children's
behavior, attitudes, and lives"20
does not tell us anything about what that influence is with respect
to any particular subject matter.
Moreover,
research on media violence is itself inconclusive. Approximately
200-250 empirical studies or experiments have been done (not "well
over 1000 studies," as five professional groups recently
asserted).21
Of these, fewer than half found support for the hypothesis that
media violence causes imitation.22
Many of the "successful" studies, moreover, involved questionable
proxies for aggressive behavior, such as hitting Bobo dolls,
delivering noise blasts in a laboratory, or answering "attitude"
questionnaires.23
Researchers who
believe in adverse media effects have sometimes represented their
findings to be more conclusive than they really are. A 22-year
longitudinal study by Professors Leonard Eron, L. Rowell Huesmann,
and their colleagues, which is frequently cited for proof of
imitative effects, in fact found a positive correlation between
violence-viewing and aggressive behavior on only one of six measures
after ten years. Huesmann's later assertion of a causal relation
between violence viewing at age 8 and criminal behavior at age 30
turned out to be based on only 3 individuals – not a large enough
sample to be meaningful.24
Huesmann had previously acknowledged that his sample was "very
small" and "must be treated very cautiously."25
In another longitudinal study, Huesmann and Eron strained to
interpret cross-national data to show that their harmful-effects
hypothesis had been proved when the overall results actually
indicated null or insignificant effects.26
Communications
scholars have increasingly come to understand that cultural
expression – including pornography – affects different individuals
in different ways, depending upon a multitude of variables.27
As Professor Kevin Durkin explains, broad generalizations about
simple, direct effects of art or entertainment "do not carry us very
far"; as much depends "upon what the child brings to TV viewing as
upon what it extracts."28
The National Research Council has also noted that media effects
theories are simplistic because they fail to consider how different
individuals respond to identical stimuli, or how different
psychosocial, neurological, and hormonal characteristics interact to
produce behavior.29
C. Difficulties Identifying "Pornography"
and "Other Inappropriate Internet Content"
Part of the
problem in identifying harm to minors is that "pornography" has no
fixed meaning. Whatever it connotes for different individuals,
pornography is not a legal term like constitutionally unprotected
obscenity, and it may have serious artistic, political, or literary
value.30
Moreover, much of the testimony before the Committee concerned
mainstream art and entertainment rather than material commonly
understood as pornographic. Professor Dolf Zillman's argument for an
expansion of "the definition of erotica and pornography" to include
R- and PG-13 rated films only underlines the fact that there is no
consensus on what sexual information or entertainment is harmful to
minors.31
Sexually
explicit Internet content that many would consider pornographic can
be found in listservs, chatrooms, safer sex sites, gay, lesbian, and
feminist sites, and academic archives, not to mention museums and
libraries. Examples include explicit nudes or sexual scenes in
classic artworks by Titian, Courbet, Balthus, or Schiele; novels
like Lady Chatterley's Lover and Ulysses; ancient
Roman frescoes; and contemporary mass-market films. Phyllis Schlafly
has termed sex education questionnaires to be "pornographic in their
explicitness,"32
and others who share her political persuasion would agree. In short,
since definitions vary, it is difficult to identify what minors
should be shielded from. Needless to say, the problem is even more
acute in identifying "other inappropriate Internet
content."
D. Morality and Socialization of
Youth
As the foregoing
discussion suggests, "harm to minors" is at bottom not a scientific,
but a moral and ideological concept. The Supreme Court recognized
this in its first harm-to-minors case, Ginsberg v. New York,
in 1968. The Court in Ginsberg acknowledged the absence of an
empirical basis to believe that exposure to pornography is harmful,
but said such a showing was unnecessary because the "girlie"
magazines at issue in the case were constitutionally unprotected as
to minors, so that the legislature needed only a rational basis to
ban their distribution. That rational basis was satisfied by the
government's asserted interest in "the ethical and moral development
of our youth."33
After
Ginsberg, the Supreme Court occasionally stated that the
government has a compelling interest in shielding minors from
exposure to "patently offensive" sex-related material,34
but it did not explain why, or rely upon empirical evidence. In
FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, Justice Stevens's plurality
opinion and Justice Powell's concurrence both assumed that hearing
vulgar words would be harmful to youth – Powell said it was a
"verbal shock treatment," with language "as potentially degrading
and harmful to children as representations of many erotic acts"– but
neither justice cited empirical research.35
More recently,
the issue of harm was raised, as noted, in Playboy
Entertainment, and also in Reno v. ACLU ("Reno
II"), a challenge to the 1997 Child Online Protection Act
(COPA).36
In both cases, the Justice Department abandoned claims of objective
or scientifically established harm to minors. In Reno II, it
argued that COPA was necessary to socialize youth lest pornography
"distort their views of sexuality." In Playboy, the
government argued that establishing harm from pornography did not
require proof because concerns about youthful "exposure to such
material are based on commonly held moral views about the upbringing
of children."37
The 1986 Meese
Commission probably had the best explanation for the nature of the
harm that is thought to flow from minors' exposure to pornography.
"To a number of us," the commission's majority report said, "the
most important harms must be seen in moral terms. ... [F]or children
to be taught by these materials that sex is public, that sex is
commercial, and that sex can be divorced from any degree of
affection, love, commitment, or marriage is for us the wrong message
at the wrong time."38
Whatever the validity of these judgments about the messages conveyed
by pornography, it is clear that the harm at issue is a matter of
morality and ideology, not science.
II. ALTERNATIVES TO TECHNOLOGY
Morality and
socialization of youth are important concerns, but they are better
addressed by education than by censorial technologies. With more
than a billion Web sites on the Internet, no filtering product can
distinguish "good" sites from "bad" ones, and all products block
large amounts of valuable expression that minors, especially older
ones, have a constitutional right to see and read. Moreover, no
technological device can possibly block all of the mainstream
entertainment that many people feel is dangerous because it promotes
permissive sexual attitudes. Most important, no technological tool
can teach sexual health, sexual responsibility, or moral
values.
There are at
least three educational approaches that advance society's interest
in the sexual education and socialization of youth. These are
Internet acceptable use policies; media literacy training; and
comprehensive sexuality education.
A. Acceptable Use Policies
Acceptable use
policies, combined with Internet training, can enable youngsters to
navigate the Web more safely than can ratings or filters. As Nancy
Willard of Responsible Netizen told the Committee, "inevitably,
young people will have unsupervised access to the Internet. We
cannot prepare them for this eventuality by trying to keep them in a
‘safe place' using technology tools until they are 18. ... We must
focus our efforts on strategies that will empower young people with
the values, knowledge, skills, and motivation to make the right
choices." Schools that have "good policies and planning," Willard
reported, do not have problems "with students accessing
inappropriate material."39
Other witnesses
echoed this view. Julie Underwood of the National School Boards
Association testified that filters "do not work," but that
acceptable use agreements have proven successful in local schools
and libraries. Carrie Gardner of the Milton Hershey School reminded
the Committee that the ability to navigate the Internet "is not
generic or acquired by osmosis"; it must be taught, just as children
"must be taught how to deal with the racism, violence, [and]
sexually explicit information." Carol Lynn Roddy of the Ohio Public
Library Information Network emphasized that we must teach children
"how to recognize good information from bad, good decision-making,
and self-protective behavior." Judith Krug of the American Library
Association described the training and support that libraries
provide to enable children "to become responsible Internet
users."40
Not all
acceptable use policies, of course, are free of First Amendment
problems. Prohibitions are sometimes vaguely worded, and leave
students to guess at what such terms as "profane" or
"discrimination"41
mean in the context of particular Internet sites. But the great
advantage of acceptable use policies is that they enable youngsters
to think about the issues, with the help of parents, teachers, and
librarians, and in the process learn how to recognize and evaluate
inaccurate information and pernicious ideas.
B. Media Literacy
Media literacy
is a burgeoning field in education today. A variety of organizations
provide curricular materials and model pedagogies. Books, articles,
conferences, and teacher training events abound. Many school
districts have developed comprehensive curricula; others incorporate
media literacy into their language arts, social studies, science,
and health programs.
The basic goal
is to educate youngsters to understand and think critically about
media images and ideas. Thus, the Center for Media Literacy offers
teaching materials for every age group on topics ranging from "race
and gender" to "news and politics," "television culture," "media
violence," and "tobacco, alcohol, sexuality, and body image
issues."42
One typical program for 7th and 8th graders in Yakima, Washington
covers media myths, film techniques, ethics of advertising,
journalistic bias, and the effects of TV violence on real-life
behavior.43
Although media
literacy experts have differing views on many questions of politics
and pedagogy (including the issue of media violence), the value of
this approach is that it teaches critical thinking, thus enabling
young people to protect themselves from possible ill effects of
pornography and "other inappropriate Internet content."
C. Comprehensive Sexuality
Education
Comprehensive
sexuality education includes discussion of sexual health, sexual
values, and the sometimes "inaccurate and unrealistic" sexual
messages conveyed by the media.44
It is thus more likely to protect youngsters from what are thought
to be pornography's pernicious effects than are the more superficial
sex education programs that do not deal with media messages, or the
narrowly ideological "abstinence-only-unless-married" curricula that
have become increasingly common.45
The comprehensive approach has also been shown to foster more
responsible sexual behavior and to delay, rather than encourage,
sexual activity.46
Ironically, many
excellent sexuality education sites on the Internet are blocked by
filters, thus preventing minors from gaining information vital to
their sexual health. Given the political quagmire that has impeded
comprehensive sexuality education in public schools, education
online should be promoted, not restricted, for youngsters of all
ages.47
CONCLUSION
With the vast
range of art, information, and ideas available online, there is
urgent need for coherent, objective, and clear-sighted exploration
of the best "tools and strategies" for addressing concerns about
minors' access to pornography and "other inappropriate Internet
content." In the final analysis, affirmative educational approaches
are more likely to be effective than technological
"fixes."
Respectfully
submitted,
Marjorie
Heins Free Expression Policy Project National Coalition
Against Censorship
ENDNOTES
1. "A National Research Council
Project on Tools and Strategies for Protecting Kids From Pornography
and Their Applicability to Other Inappropriate Internet Content," http://www4.nas.edu/cpsma/cstb/itas.nsf
2. Brief Amici Curiae of
Sexuality Scholars, Researchers, Educators and Therapists in Support
of Appellee in United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group,
No. 98-1682 (Oct. Term 1998), p. 8.
3. Testimony of Jeffrey McIntyre Before
the National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences,
Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, Committee to Study
Tools and Strategies for Protecting Kids From Pornography and Their
Applicability to Other Inappropriate Internet Content (hereafter,
"the Committee") (Oct. 18, 2000); see also Joanne Cantor, Abstract -
"Autobiographical Memories of Exposure to Sexual Media Content" (to
be presented at the Society for Research in Child Development
Conference, Minneapolis, Apr. 20, 2001) ("largely because of the
difficulty of obtaining permission to exposure children to sexual
images, relatively few studies have been conducted in this
area").
4. Edward Mulvey & Jeffrey
Haugaard, Surgeon General's Workshop on Pornography and Public
Health (Washington, DC: Dep't of HHS, June 22-24, 1986)
(manuscript ed.), pp. 61-62.
5. Attorney General's Commission on
Pornography, Final Report (Washington, DC: Gov't Printing
Office, 1986), pp. 303, 344; Marjorie Heins, Not in Front of the
Children: "Indecency," Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth
(New York: Hill & Wang, forthcoming, May 2001), pp.
109-12.
6. Richard Green, Sexual Science and
the Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, 1992).
7. Transcript, Playboy Entertainment
Group v. U.S., No. 96-94 (D. Del. Mar. 5, 1998), pp. 361,
365-67, 397.
8. Playboy Entertainment Group v.
U.S., 945 F. Supp. 772, 786 n. 25 (D. Del. 1996), aff'd mem.,
520 U.S. 1141 (1997).
9. Playboy Transcript, pp.
445-81 (Mar. 5, 1998); see Playboy Entertainment Group v.
U.S., 30 F. Supp.2d 702, 710-11 (D.Del. 1998), aff'd, 529 U.S.
803 (2000).
10. Playboy Entertainment
Group, 30 F. Supp.2d at 716. In striking down the signal bleed
law, neither the lower court nor the Supreme Court relied on the
lack of evidence of harm. Instead, both courts invalidated the law
based on the existence of other, less burdensome ways of enabling
parents to block their children's access to sexually explicit signal
bleed if they wished to do so.
11. Charles Corder-Bolz, "Television
and Adolescents' Sexual Behavior," 3 Sex Educ. Coalition News
3, 5 (1981).
12. Jane Brown & Susan Newcomer,
"Television Viewing and Adolescents' Sexual Behavior," 21 J. of
Homosexuality 77, 84, 88 (1991); see also Risking the Future
– Adolescent Sexuality, Pregnancy, and Child-bearing (Cheryl
Haynes, ed.) (Washington DC: Nat'l Academy Press, 1987), p. 249
(noting that no study "has convincingly linked program content and
exposure to adolescent sexual attitudes and behavior"); American
Academy of Pediatrics, "Children, Adolescents, and Television," 96
Pediatrics 786 (1995) ("there is no clear documentation" that
the relationship between TV viewing and sexual activity "is
causal").
13. Jeffrey Arnett, "The Soundtrack of
Restlessness – Musical Preferences and Reckless Behavior
Among Adolescents," 7 J. Adol. Rsrch 313, 328 (1992); see
also Jeffrey Arnett, "Adolescents and heavy metal music: >From the
mouths of metalheads," 23 Youth & Society 76 (1991);
Lawrence Kurdek, "Gender differences in the psychological
symptomatology and coping strategies of young adolescents," 7 J.
Early Adol. 395 (1987) ("heavy metal music, with its angry and
aggressive sound, is especially useful to adolescents in purging
anger").
14. Written testimony of Jane
Brown (Dec. 13, 2000), p. 2; see also Jane Brown & Susannah
Stern, "Sex and the Media," (Background Paper to the Committee, June
20, 2000), p. 10 (chart listing "effects" of sexual content in
mainstream media, with some citations to studies that are merely
correlational).
15. Larry Greeson & Rose Ann
Williams, "Social Implications of Music Videos for Youth: An
Analysis of the Contents and Effects of MTV," 18 Youth &
Society 177 (1986). The researchers' assumption that "acceptance
of premarital sex" is "deleterious" may be questioned: very few
Americans today refrain from sexual activity unless or until
married. See Robert Michael et al., Sex in America – A
Definitive Survey (Boston: Little Brown, 1994), pp. 90-96;
Malcolm Potts & Roger Short, Ever Since Adam and Eve – The
Evolution of Human Sexuality (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge U. Press,
1999), p. 77 (only 3% of Americans now delay first intercourse until
marriage). Another experiment with music videos, performed on 44
college students (not minors), found that a program with
"stereotyped sexual imagery" produced a statistically significant
short-term increase in beliefs about "adversarial sexual
relationships," but no effect on sex role stereotyping, acceptance
of rape myths, or acceptance of interpersonal violence. Linda Kalof,
"The Effects of Gender and Music Video Imagery on Sexual Attitudes,"
130 J. Social Psych. 378 (1999).
16. Judith Becker & Robert Stein,
"Is Sexual Erotica Associated with Sexual Deviance in Adolescent
Males?" 14 Int'l J. Law & Psychiatry 85 (1991); Milton
Diamond & Ayako Uchiyama, "Pornography, Rape, and Sex Crimes in
Japan," 22 Int'l J. Law and Psychiatry 1, 15-19 (1999); Paul
Gebhard et al., Sex Offenders (New York: Harper &
Row, 1965), pp. 670-78; Ira Reiss & Harriet Reiss, Solving
America's Sexual Crisis (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997),
chs. 3 & 6; Kathryn Kelley et al., "Three Faces of Sexual
Explicitness – the Good, the Bad, and the Useful," in
Pornography – Research Advances and Policy Considerations
(Dolf Zillmann & Jennings Bryant, eds.) (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum, 1989), p. 67.
17. Cantor, supra n.
3.
18. Joanne Cantor, Mommy, I'm
Scared (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1988).
19. Playboy, 30 F. Supp.2d at
716.
20. McIntyre Testimony, supra n. 3,
p. 1.
21. American Academy of Pediatrics et
al., Joint Statement on the Impact of Entertainment Violence
on Children (July 26, 2000). The confusion arises from failing
to distinguish between the total commentary on media violence, or on
television generally, and the smaller number of empirical studies or
experiments. See John Murray, "Studying Television Violence: A
Research Agenda for the 21st Century," in Research Paradigms,
Television, and Social Behavior (Joy Keiko Asamen & Gordon
Berry, eds.) (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998), pp. 378, 381
(reporting almost 3,000 publications on "the impact of television"
by 1980; and about 1,000 reports "over the past half century" on
"the issue of television violence" – of which "only a small
percentage ... represent original studies or research reports");
Haejung Paik & George Comstock, "The Effects of Television
Violence on Antisocial Behavior: A Meta-analysis," 21 Comm.
Rsrch 516 (1994) (analyzing a total field of 217 studies);
Edward Donnerstein, "Mass Media Violence: Thoughts on the Debate,"
22 Hofstra L. Rev. 827, 828 (1994) (reporting "perhaps" 3,000
studies on television, with probably 200-250 "directly related to
violence in the media"); Jonathan Freedman, Villain or Scapegoat:
Media Violence and Aggression (manuscript; under contract with
U. of Texas Press, 2001) (about 200 studies).
22. Villain or Scapegoat,
supra n. 21. Evidence is even sparser to support the
hypothesis that media depictions of violence cause widespread
"desensitization." Id., pp. 186-201.
23. Villain or Scapegoat. Freedman's
review includes all of the surveys, laboratory experiments, field
experiments, longitudinal studies, and other empirical studies that
he was able to locate. He found that, of the laboratory experiments,
37% supported a causal connection, and 44% did not. When he
eliminated studies that used questionable measures of aggression,
only 27% supported the causal hypothesis. Of the field experiments,
3 out of 11 "obtained even slightly supportive results," or 3 out of
24 if separate experiments within one study were counted.
Id., pp. 208-11. For other critiques of claims that violent
entertainment has proven adverse effects, see William McGuire, "The
Myth of Massive Media Impact: Savagings and Salvagings," in
Public Comm. & and Behav., Vol. 1 (George Comstock, ed.)
(New York: Academic Press, 1986), p. 174; Joyce Sprafkin et al.,
"Effects of Viewing Aggressive Cartoons on the Behavior of Learning
Disabled Children," 28 J. Child Psych. & Psychiatry 387
(1987); Kenneth Gadow & Joyce Sprafkin, "Field Experiments of
Television Violence with Children: Evidence for an Environmental
Hazard?" 83 Pediatrics 399 (1989); Thomas Cook et al.,
"The Implicit Assumptions of Television Research: An Analysis of the
1982 NIMH Report on Television and Behavior," 47 Pub.
Opin. Q. 161 (1983).
24. See Richard Rhodes, "The Media-Violence
Myth," Rolling Stone, Nov. 23, 2000, p. 55; Jonathan
Freedman, "Effect of Television Violence on Aggressiveness," 96
Psych. Bulletin 227 (1984) (analyzing the first ten years of
the study).
25. L. Rowell Huesmann & Laurie Miller,
"Long-Term Effects of Repeated Exposure to Media Violence in
Childhood," in Aggressive Behavior: Current Perspectives (L.
Rowell Huesmann, ed.) (New York: Plenum Press, 1994), p.
169.
26. Jonathan Freedman, "Viewing Television
Violence Does Not Make People More Aggressive," 22 Hofstra L.
Rev. 833, 849-51 (1994); Jonathan Freedman, "Television Violence
and Aggression: What Psychologists Should Tell the Public," in
Psychology and Social Policy (Peter Suedfeld & Philip
Tetlock, eds.) (New York: Hemisphere, 1991), pp. 182-84. The book
resulting from the cross-national study was Television and the
Aggressive Child: A Cross-national Comparison (L. Rowell
Huesmann & Leonard Eron, eds.) (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum,
1986). Dutch researchers participating in the study refused to go
along with Eron and Huesmann's conclusions; see Oene Wiegman et
al., "A Longitudinal Study of the Effects of Television Viewing
on Aggressive and Prosocial Behaviors," 31 Brit. J. Social
Psych. 147 (1992).
27. See, e.g., Debra Niehoff, The Biology
of Violence (New York: The Free Press, 1999) (describing sources
of aggression in brain chemistry, which in turn is shaped by the
environment); Jonathan Kellerman, Savage Spawn – Reflections on
Violent Children (New York: Ballantine, 1999) (positing that
aggression, like other behaviors, results from the interaction of
inborn traits with environmental influences, with media having
little direct impact).
28. Kevin Durkin, Television, Sex Roles
and Children: A developmental social psychological account
(Milton Keynes, UK: Open U. Press, 1985), p.3; see also Henry
Jenkins, "Professor Jenkins Goes to Washington," Harper's,
July 1999, p. 19 (because of young people's different responses to
"the media landscape," "universalizing claims are fundamentally
inadequate in accounting for media's social and cultural
impact").
29. National Research Council,
Understanding and Preventing Violence (Albert Reiss, Jr.
& Jeffrey Roth, eds.) (Washington, DC: Nat'l Academy
Press,1993), pp. 101-02.
30. See Miller v. California, 413
U.S. 15, 24 (1973).
31. Dolf Zillman, "Influence of Unrestrained
Access to Erotica on Adolescents' and Young Adults' Dispositions
Toward Sexuality," 27S J. Adol. Health 41, 43
(2000).
32. Phyllis Schlafly, "Classes in Sex,
Nuclear War Harm Students," Conserv. Digest, May 1984, p.
38.
33. Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S.
629, 639-42 (1968).
34. Sable Communications v. FCC, 492
U.S. 115, 126, 131 (1989); Denver Area Educational Telecomm'ns
Consortium v. FCC, 518 U.S. 727, 732 (1996) (Breyer, J.);
id. at 805-06 (Kennedy & Ginsberg, JJ.).
35. FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438
U.S. 726, 749 (1978) (Stevens, J.); id. at 757-58, 761
(Powell, J.). The Pacifica Court did not address arguments by
the ACLU and the Association of American Publishers as amici
curiae that there was no evidence of harm to minors from vulgar
words. Brief of the American Civil Liberties Union et al. in
FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, No. 77-528 (Oct. Term, 1977), pp.
24-25.
36. ACLU v. Reno ("Reno II"),
217 F.3d 162 (3d Cir. 2000), petition for cert. filed, Feb. 12,
2001. The issue was also raised in Reno v. ACLU ("Reno
I"), 521 U.S. 844 (1997), where the plaintiffs introduced
testimony from sexuality scholar and therapist William Stayton that
experts in the field agree exposure to pornography does not in
itself harm children, see Heins, supra n. 5, pp. 170-72. The
Supreme Court in Reno I did not directly address the issue of
harm, apart from ruling that "indecency" was too broad a censorship
standard even for minors, because it could restrict their access to
artworks, safer sex information, and even "the card catalogue of the
Carnegie Library." 521 U.S. at 878.
37. Brief for Appellant in ACLU v.
Reno, No. 99-1324 (3rd Cir. July 26, 1999), p. 7 (quoting S.
Rep. No. 105-225 [1998], p. 11); Brief for Appellants in U.S. v.
Playboy Entertainment Group, No. 98-1682 (Oct. Term, 1998), pp.
35 n.21, 38-40.
38. Final Report, supra n. 5,
pp. 303, 344.
39. Nancy Willard, "Choosing Not To Go Down
the Not-so-good Cyberstreets," Background Paper to the Committee
(Dec. 13, 2000).
40. Memo from Julie Underwood to the
Committee re: Filtering Update (Oct. 19, 2000); Testimony of Carrie
Gardner to the Committee (July 18, 2000); Testimony of Carol Lynn
Roddy (July 18, 2000); Testimony of Judith Krug (July 18, 2000). See
also Commission on Child Online Protection (COPA), Report to
Congress (Washington DC: COPA Comm'n, Oct. 20, 2000), pp. 19,
30, 36 (filters can interfere with older minors' rights to access
"potentially informative and appropriate material," but acceptable
use policies can teach "awareness and behavior" without
censorship).
41. Terms used in Responsible Netizen's
model policy; see Willard, supra n. 39, n. 2; Responsible
Netizen, "District Internet Policy and Regulations," http://www.uoregon.edu/templates/district_policy.html
42. See http://www.medialit.org/,
which contains information on the Center and
links to other media literacy sites; Association
for Media Literacy Web site, http://interact.uoregon.edu/;
Dorothy Singer & Jerome Singer, "Developing Critical Viewing
Skills and Media Literacy in Children," 557 Annals AAPSS 164
(1998); Jane Brown & Sarah Keller, "Can the Mass Media be
Healthy Sex Educators?" 32 Fam. Planning Persp. 255, 256
(2000) (in Canada and Australia, media literacy "is taught at all
grade levels and throughout the curriculum").
43. Molly Berger, Media Class 7th-8th
Grade Twelve Week Elective, http://interact.uoregon.edu/.
44. National Guidelines Task Force,
Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education (New York:
SIECUS, 1996), pp. 47-52; see also William Fisher & Azy Barak,
"Sex Education as a Corrective: Immunizing Against Possible Effects
of Pornography," in Zillmann & Bryant, supra n. 16, pp.
289-362.
45. A 1996 law grants federal funds for
sexuality education programs only if they teach that "sexual
activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have
harmful psychological and physical effects," and avoid any but
negative discussion of contraceptive and safer sex techniques.
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, PL
104-193, 104th Cong., 2d Sess. (1996). On the effects of the law,
see Daniel Daley & Vivian Wong, Between the Lines: States'
Implementation of the Federal Government's Section 510(b) Abstinence
Education Program (New York: SIECUS, 1999); Jodie Levin-Epstein,
Abstinence Unless Married Education (Washington, DC: Center
for Law & Social Policy, 1998).
46. See Anne Grunseit et al.
"Sexuality Education and Young People's Sexual Behavior: A Review of
Studies," 12 J. Adoles. Rsrch 421 (1997); Douglas Kirby,
No Easy Answers: Research Findings on Programs to Reduce Teen
Pregnancy (Washington, DC: Nat'l Campaign to Prevent Teen
Pregnancy, 1997); Douglas Kirby et al., "School-Based
Programs to Reduce Sexual Risk Behaviors: A Review of
Effectiveness," 109 Pub. Health Rep. 339 (1994); Jennifer
Frost & Jacqueline Forrest, "Understanding the Impact of
Effective Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Programs," 27 Fam.
Planning Persp. 188 (1995).
47. Brown & Keller, supra n.
42.
The Free
Expression Policy Project is supported by grants from the Andy
Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation,
and the Open Society Institute.
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