Psychologist blames parents for desensitized kids
By Carmen Chai, Postmedia News (Montreal Gazette)
September 20, 2010
Dr. Oren Amitay, a Toronto-based clinical psychologist and university lecturer,
says today's young Canadians are being inundated with images of sex and violence
- and that parents aren't monitoring what their kids watch.
Photograph by: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images, Getty Images
After a week that saw police in British Columbia
begging teenagers to stop sharing photos of a sexual-assault case online, a
psychologist is lamenting a generation of parents he says have "failed
miserably" to bestow their children with empathy.
Dr. Oren Amitay, a Toronto-based clinical psychologist and university lecturer,
says today's young Canadians are being inundated with images of sex and violence
- and that parents aren't monitoring what their kids watch.
"There is absolutely no doubt parents are not involved enough with their
children," said Amitay, who conducts parenting-capacity assessments for the
Children's Aid Society.
"Never before in the history of modern society
have kids been exposed to the things they're being exposed to these days.
Because parents aren't filtering this out, kids' perceptions are being skewed
and they're being desensitized to what they're seeing," he said.
"If (kids) are watching something violent or offensive and everyone is
laughing, they'll think it's the norm." Mounties expressed outrage
this week as they called for teens to stop distributing graphic photos taken
last weekend of a 16-year-old girl - possibly drugged - as she was being
gang-raped by a group of seven males in a field in the Vancouver suburb of Pitt
Meadows.
"I've been involved in investigating sexual assaults for many years. In
that time I've never experienced anything like what is occurring in this
investigation," said Ridge Meadows RCMP Sgt. Jennifer Hyland at the time.
RCMP have made two arrests in the case, including the 16-year-old they allege
took the photos. That teen may face child pornography charges, as the victim is
16.
Amitay said he was not surprised to hear that teenagers
who had photos of the incident were sharing the content on Facebook.
He said youth share violent videos every day, pointing to an example of an
online video of a man "peeing on his girlfriend and terrorizing her."
"It's monkey see, monkey do. They don't see it's affecting a person and to
them the person on the Internet is not real," he said.
The case has also caused division in the school, with some teenagers accusing
the victim of lying, and those who have spoken up on either side of the issue
receiving angry or threatening responses online.
Amitay said he believes the teens were simply using the "just-world"
theory, which is when people, not just youth, deflect their own anxieties by
blaming victims for things that were not their fault.
"If I can say this girl was a slut or a skank . . . if I can say she
deserved it, it makes me feel comfortable because I can tell myself I'm not that
stupid, I'm not that slutty, it'll never happen to me," he said.
