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The traditional cultural values of Western society are degenerating under the influences of corporate politics, the commercialization of culture and the impact of mass media. Society is awakening from its fascination with television entertainment to find itself stripped of tradition, controlled by an oppressive power structure and bound to the credit obligations of a defunct American dream. R. Cronk. Consumerism and the New Capitalism.

"Everybody’s got values . . . The thing that frightens me is the way that an eroding public school system . . . and television on all over the place is leading to a steady dumbing down of the American public and a corrosion of basic critical thinking in the population."
-- Jamie Raskin, American University law professor, November 2004 on the Democracy Now! radio program

All mass media in the end alienate people from personal experience and though appearing to offset it, intensify their moral isolation from each other, from reality and from themselves. One may turn to the mass media when lonely or bored. But mass media, once they become a habit, impair the capacity for meaningful experience. . . . The habit feeds on itself, establishing a vicious circle as addictions do. . . . Even the most profound of experiences, articulated too often on the same level (by the media), is reduced to a cliche. . . . They lessen people's capacity to experience life itself. Van den Haag, in Rosenberg and White, Mass Culture, p. 529.

The Culture of Selling

Advertising is all about the manipulation of human beings. It responds to people only inasmuch as they are consumers, and its relationship to its audience is based on valuing them only in so far as they are able to consume. These values and perceptions then enter the culture and influence people's day to day life, their relationships and values. There is no question that advertising is hugely successful but in a way that is not generally understood: it has made the values, and valuing, of consumption and possessing ever more and grander consumables, not necessarily with any effort, the indication of social success. More

Dumbing down” is caused by multiple influences such as:

family instability, value shifts, changing beliefs about what life "should" offer and how much "effort" is required, an increasing sense of powerlessness over work in a global economy. More

Violent video games desensitize players to real-world violence

"It's already well known that playing violent video games increases aggressive behavior and decreases helping behavior," said University of Michigan researcher Brad Bushman. "But this study is the first to link exposure to violent video games with a diminished reaction to violent images." More

Violent video games can make people aggressive

"There is a causal link between playing the first-person shooting game in our experiment and brain-activity pattern that are considered as characteristic for aggressive cognitions and affects," said René Weber, assistant professor of communication and telecommunication at MSU and a researcher on the project.
"There is a neurological link and there is a short-term causal relationship. Violent video games frequently have been criticized for enhancing aggressive reactions such as aggressive cognitions, aggressive affects or aggressive behavior. On a neurobiological level we have shown the link exists." More

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