Steubenville Rape and Social Media: All the Internet’s a Stage

Shakespeare begins Act II, Scene VII of As You Like It with the immortal words, All the world’s a stage.” In this play, he catalogs the seven stages of a man’s life. Among them is the competitive phase of life which Shakespeare calls “the soldier.” At this age, people seek to gain recognition, even though it may be short lived and at the cost of their own lives. As Shakespeare puts it, they are:

Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth.

These nine words sum up the millions spawned by the Steubenville, Ohio, rape trial of two high school football players. They were found guilty of raping a teenage girl who was reportedly so drunk that she could not consent to sex, although the defense disputed her state of consciousness at the trial.

This is not the first time things got out of control at a party that mixed minors with alcohol. So what made this case so notorious? In my opinion, the case made national headlines because:

  • Teens at the party posted videos and pictures of the event on social media sites [1]
  • Those who witnessed the rape made hundreds of tweets about it, yet did nothing to stop it or report it to authorities [1]
  • Prosecutors used this trail of online evidence to convict the teens [2]
  • An online video showed males joking about the victim callously and remorselessly, exemplifying what some call a “culture of rape” and others call “cultural rot” [3]
  • Two girls reportedly threatened on Twitter to kill the victim and may now be prosecuted separately for their threats [4]
  • These teens claimed that they did not think they were committing crimes
  • Social media, rivals of mainstream media, were at the heart of the affair

It was a Shakespearean tragedy in every sense of the phrase and a perfect media firestorm. The case involved a small town, teenagers, football, rape, alcohol, the Internet, YouTube, Twitter, ruined lives, rival mediums, outrage and more. Even hackers got in on the action when Anonymous posted the video. See Anonymous Leaks Horrifying Video of Steubenville High Schoolers Joking About Raping a Teenager ‘Deader than Trayvon Martin’. (Warning: This is about ten minutes long and emotionally difficult to watch.)

The video above, even though it focuses primarily on one male, clearly shows that several were competing with each other to describe the events of that night in the most degrading terms possible. That the video was later posted online and used as evidence in a felony trial makes Shakespeare’s words seem prophetic.

“Seeking the bubble reputation, even in the cannon’s mouth.”

As I’ve been writing these 522 words, the number of search results reported by Google on “Steubenville rape” increased by more than one million (from 219,000,000 to 220,000,000). The Internet truly has become the stage where tragedies like this play out.

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[1] http://prinniefied.com/wp/steubenville-high-school-gang-rape-case-firs/

[2] Twitter, YouTube Make Steubenville Case Even More Complicated

[3] Patricia Leavy, PhD: Boys Seeking Celebrity Prom Dates, Steubenville, and How the Media Still Don’t Get it

[4] Two charged with threats in Steubenville rape case – CBS News, Girls Threaten Steubenville Rape Accuser On Facebook, Twitter; 2 Face Charges In Ohio

“A rape for my appetizer, a mass murder for my entree and a nuclear crisis for dessert!”

shutterstock_83392015So whatever happened to the days when you could eat at a restaurant without a half dozen televisions distracting you. Last week, after getting up at 4 AM one day and working frantically to meet deadlines all morning, I lunched at an Asian restaurant. The food came with a heaping helping of CNN, Headline News, local news, ESPN, soap operas and more. As I waited for my order to arrive, the televisions bombarded me with stories about:

  • A mass shooting of school children
  • An ex-cop allegedly turned cop killer
  • A large increase in gun sales
  • The rape and slaying of a child
  • A serial arsonist
  • The North Korean nuclear threat
  • The Iranian nuclear threat
  • The War on Drugs
  • The War on Terror
  • The War on Afghanistan
  • Alleged sexual abuse by priests
  • The doping crisis in cycling
  • Brain injuries in football
  • An approaching asteroid big enough to wipe out all life on earth

With those, I had a side order of a Cialis commercial – “Just so I could be ready for the moment” when my main course arrived.  The main course was a flambé of “Johnny left Sally after Sally had Jimmy’s baby” on a soap opera.

Frankly, this menu of the world’s woes left me with a little heartburn. Instead of miso soup, I got my fill of misery. To cap off the experience, the Muzak was turned up so loud I could barely hear my luncheon partner. We were forced to  stare at a panoply of pain scrolling across screen after screen. I wonder if this is what it’s like to live inside a depressed person’s head – inescapable, recurring videos reminding you of pain everywhere you turn.

To google for answers! In 2012, the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking published a study called Media Multitasking Is Associated with Symptoms of Depression and Social Anxiety by Mark W. Becker, Ph.D., Reem Alzahabi, B.S., and Christopher J. Hopwood, Ph.D. from the Department of Psychology at Michigan State University.

The researchers found that media multitasking was associated with higher depression and social anxiety symptoms. They say:
“The unique association between media multitasking and these measures of psychosocial dysfunction suggests that the growing trend of multitasking with media may represent a unique risk factor for mental health problems related to mood and anxiety.”

The researchers noted that spending too much time in front of screens can mean less time spent on social activities when people deal with each other face to face. (See Rick Janacek’s post yesterday, “Texting: The Death of Conversation?”)

While the researchers found a high correlation between media multitasking and depression/anxiety, they did not determine whether multitasking caused the symptoms or whether already-depressed-and-anxious people were simply turning to multitasking for distraction.

How many people engage in media multitasking? A survey by Nielsen released in December of 2012 showed that 36 percent of those between 35 and 54 used a tablet while watching television, and that 44 percent of those between 55-64 did the same. Approximately 40 percent of Americans now use smartphones and tablets while watching TV. Tweeting about TV rose 29 percent in just the first six months of 2012.

In 2009, the Los Angeles Times reported on researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Harvard Medical School who looked at the media habits of 4,142 healthy adolescents. They calculated that each additional hour of TV watched per day boosted the odds of becoming depressed by 8%. This is important because this age group spends on average more than 7 hours per day with media, and more than 10 hours per day when multitasking is factored in. The researchers described several possible explanations.

  • TV watching reduced time for organized after-school activities and other pursuits thought to reduce the risk of depression.
  • TV watching displaced sleep, an important factor in emotional growth.
  • Programs and ads may have made teens feel inadequate and stirred feelings of depression.
  • Exposure to violent, disturbing images may depress people.

This brings us back full circle to my lunch at the Asian restaurant in Houston. Researching this topic reminded me of a much different experience I had decades ago at a Japanese restaurant in Chicago called Azuma House. Upon entering Azuma House, one was greeted by the tranquil sounds of running water and a bamboo flute. You were then led to a private, quiet dining room and served by gracious hostesses in kimonos whose ritual bows made you feel like a king or queen. The atmosphere helped people connect with each other all night long as sumptuous course after course was served.

It was a welcome retreat from the pressures of the workaday world. My, how times have changed! It’s kind of depressing.

Impact of TV Violence on Sleep

In the weeks following 9/11, I saw the World Trade Towers fall dozens, if not hundreds, of times in televised replays. The effect on my sleep was immediate. I slept restlessly, had nightmares, woke frequently, and felt anxiety. I had several friends/clients in the Towers that day. While the nightmares faded over time, the other effects did not. For the better part of a decade, I woke up at least once virtually every night.

Somehow a pattern had formed. I saw a sleep doctor. He told me to stop watching TV before bedtime, that TV stimulated the brain when it needed to relax. But I wondered whether there was something more going on – whether the violence of those images was somehow still disturbing my sleep and whether others were similarly affected.

A 2011 New York Times article by Anemona Hartocollis, 10 Years and a Diagnosis Later, 9/11 Demons Haunt Thousands, confirmed my suspicions. The article discussed the impact of the event on people who had experienced it firsthand. The article chronicled a list of serious maladies ranging from chronic sleep disturbances and lung cancer to post-traumatic stress disorder. But could exposure to the event on television also cause sleep disorders?

A 2004 study called Television Images and Probable Posttraumatic Stress Disorder After September 11 by Jennifer Ahern, MPH; Sandro Galea, MD; Heidi Resnick, PhD; and David Vlahov, PhD, in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease showed that people who viewed more television images of the attacks in the seven days after 9/11 had a higher probability of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The authors wrote, “Television may merit consideration as a potential exposure to a traumatic event.”

Another study published in 2007 in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms Following Media Exposure to Tragic Events: Impact of 9/11 on Children at Risk for Anxiety Disorders) found the amount of time children spent viewing 9/11 coverage on television predicted an increased risk of PTSD symptoms. The authors (Michael Otto, Aude Henin, Dina Hirshfeld-Becker, Mark Pollack, Joseph Biederman, and Jerold Rosenbaum of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School) conclude, “Media viewing of tragic events is sufficient to produce PTSD symptoms in vulnerable populations such as children.”

Outside of the context of a tragic event like 9/11, I began to wonder whether the general level of violence one sees on TV can affect sleep. Most studies have focused on how the medium itself stimulate the brain. But I found this study published In 2011 in The Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics by Michelle M. Garrison, Kimberly Liekweg and Dimitri A. Christakis titled Media Use and Child Sleep: The Impact of Content, Timing, and Environment. The authors determined that media content and viewing time correlate significantly with children’s sleep quality.

FamilyTV

The authors had 612 parents keep media diaries showing what, when, where and with whom their children watched TV for a week. They also correlated the diaries with a sleep questionnaire and found:

“Children with a bedroom television consumed more media and were more likely to have a sleep problem. In regression models, each additional hour of evening media use was associated with a significant increase in the sleep problem score (0.743 [95% confidence interval: 0.373–1.114]), as was daytime use with violent content (0.398 [95% confidence interval:0.121– 0.676]). There was a trend toward greater impact of daytime violent use in the context of a bedroom television (P  .098) and in low-income children (P  .07).”

The authors concluded that violent content and evening media use were associated with increased sleep problems. However, they observed no such effects with nonviolent daytime media use. To foster better sleep patterns, they advise parents to control their children’s watching of programs with violent content and to reduce evening media use.

My Take

These studies show sleep disturbances can be related to televised violence. They also raise some corollary questions, “What are the long term health consequences of constant exposure to images of violence? Does the rise in the use of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs correlate at all to increased viewing of violence through media?” A report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2011, by Laura A. Pratt, Ph.D.; Debra J. Brody, M.P.H.; and Qiuping Gu, M.D., Ph.D., found that “From 1988–1994 through 2005–2008, the rate of antidepressant use in the United States among all ages increased nearly 400%.” To be clear, the report notes that the authors did not study specific causes for the increase, i.e., with media useage. But I can’t help but wonder what, if any, correlation there is. Numerous studies now show that people spend more time multitasking with media than sleeping.