Bullying in schools: doctors' responsibilities

media images on the mental health of children.'1 12 Children of different ages have very different capacities for understanding media violence, and adults' perceptions of what is violent may not agree with children's.Developmental factors, including the degree of attachment to parenting adults, ability to control aggression, cognitive ability, and moral development are particularly relevant to how children experience, understand, and process media violence.'3The advent of videos depicting the mutilation, torture, and dismemberment of humans and the violation and degradation of women has called into question the validity of studies done with more conventional images.4Concem about possible adverse effects led to the Video Recordings Act 1984 and to the penalties for supplying unclassified videos to young people being stiffened in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.Technological advances, including satellite and cable television, interactive computer games, and the information superhighway, give children easier access to a wide range of violent images, with less prospect of effective censorship.The need is therefore to consider how best to protect and educate children.Parents need more objective information about the content of films to supervise their children better.They also need education courses about the media and should participate in decisions about the appropriate classification of films and videos.'4Media studies is now a part of the national curriculum for English, albeit a marginal one, and more systematic, coordinated provision of such studies is needed.Training in non-violent methods of resolving conflict is effective in reducing aggression in young children, and these techniques deserve wider promulgation.'105Some people argue that horror films can offer a form of vicarious training in coping with fear and that they are little more than a contemporary form of fairy tale, which explains their popularity.Although most children can learn to dis- tinguish fiction from fact quite early and many enjoy a feeling of fear, which they know will be resolved by a "happy" ending, in fiction, factual violence and horror may be more frightening as the end is unpredictable and uncontrollable.Research findings on this, however, are equivocal and inconsistent (D Buckingham, unpublished literature review).