Media Brings Out the Worst Behavior in Teens

Seeking to find a reason why teenagers in the United States engage in such risky behavior as “car surfing,” researchers at the Case Western University School of Medicine, in Cleveland, Ohio, have set out to analyze what drives the young ones to perform true acts of madness. Moving past a simple neurological injury study, the team has been able to determine that the spikes in various types of teen risky behavior over the last decade coincide or shortly follow the release of movies and games showing that specific type of conduit. The correlation is most obvious in car accidents than in any other area, LiveScience reports.

In a paper published in the July issue of the Journal of Neurosurgery: Pediatrics, the team reveals that the risky, straight-out dumb behavior that some teens exhibit is a direct consequence of the type of media they are exposed to since childhood. The experts also mention the fact that the youngsters involved in acts such as car surfing also lack basic knowledge or awareness of what would happen if they were to suddenly become separated from the hood of the car they are traveling on.

Hitting a brick wall, or a glass-encrusted concrete head-on at 25 mph or more naturally has devastating consequences on the human skull, neck and backbone, a combination of which usually hits the ground first, and bears the full brunt of the impact. Of those caught doing the dangerous “sport,” not many were able to answer basic questions in physics, which would explain to some extent the so-called “bravery” they exhibited in surfing cars.

While the “game” has been around since the 1980s, it wasn't until the end of the 1990s that it made a spectacular comeback, once the first two titles in the Grand Theft Auto series came out. California, Florida and Texas were the worst affected, with a high percentage of teens committed to hospitals suffering from skull fractures and related conditions. As opposed to that, the risk of severe head injury while riding a bike is only of about 25 percent.

The show “Jackass” also had a direct contribution to the rise of such fatalities, as did the release of other GTA games after 2005, as well as a number of videos posted on YouTube, showing users surfing their cars. A drop in accident rates was noticed in the years when no new shows or games appeared that depicted the behavior.