Special Issue: 2007's Most Consequential Clips

After analyzing 16,475 college students over a span of more than 24 years, a group of researchers concluded that collegians today are far more narcissistic than those in previous generations. By 2006, two-thirds of all students had above-average scores on a standardized inventory test that indicated various degrees of self-centeredness—a 30% increase since 1982. "Current technology fuels the increase in narcissism," said the study's lead author, San Diego State University professor Jean Twenge. "By its very name, MySpace encourages attention-seeking, as does YouTube." [AP, 2/28/07]

QUOTE: "I've lost interest in the cracks, chips, holes and broken places in the lives of men like Cho Seung-Hui, the mass murderer of Virginia Tech. The pain, grievances and self-pity of mass killers are only symptoms of the real explanation. Those who do these things share one common trait. They are raging narcissists." —Time contributor David Von Drehle [Time, 4/19/07]

QUOTE: "Hollywood and defenders of violent films dismiss Virginia Tech as a 'unique' event, arguing that [killer Seung-Hui] Cho was profoundly alienated from our culture, not at all a product of it. ... These commentators insist there's no point in debating which came first, the violent chicken or her violent representational egg, since no causal link has ever been proven between the egg and the chicken anyway. Besides, violent images can be found everywhere—on the news, in great art and literature, even Shakespeare! ... [But] to defend mindless exercises in sadism like The Hills Have Eyes II by citing Macbeth is almost like using Romeo and Juliet to justify child pornography. The notion that 'movies don't kill people, lunatics kill people' is liberating to us screenwriters because it permits us to give life to our most demented fantasies and put them up on the big screen without any hand-wringing. ... [But] can we really in good conscience conclude that the violence saturating our popular culture has no impact?" —screenwriter Mike White [nytimes.com, 5/2/07]

QUOTE: "There's nothing you can do to a human being onscreen that is taboo anymore. Over and over again, people are breaking the boundaries of the body, hurting people, chopping people up, ravaging people. ... For things to be truly scary, we're going to have to find new boundaries to tread on." —screenwriter/producer Akiva Goldsman [latimes.com, 6/9/07]

QUOTE: "When I go to see an R-rated horror movie, I want lots of violence. I want nudity. I want sex and violence mixed together. What's wrong with that? ... It's all pretend. It's all fake. It's just acting. It's just magic tricks. Hopefully we'll get to a point where people realize movies don't cause violence. It just reflects the violence going on in the culture." —film director Eli Roth [mtv.com, 3/28/07]

After analyzing 41 studies conducted since 1963, University of Michigan researchers L. Rowell Huesmann and Brad Bushman concluded that violent media—including television, film and video games—poses a significant public health threat. Huesmann summarized their findings by saying, "Media violence increases the risk significantly that the viewer or game player will behave more violently both in the short and long run. ... Exposure to violent electronic media has a larger effect than all but one other well-known threat to public health. The only effect slightly larger than the effect of media violence on aggression is that of cigarette smoking on lung cancer." [Reuters, 11/28; medpagetoday.com, 11/29/07]

According to an AP/AOL Games poll, 81% of children between the ages of 4 and 17 regularly play computer or video games. Among adults 18 and older, the figure is 38%. Forty-one percent of all gamers were classified as "hardcore gamers," meaning they play at least three hours weekly. [gamedaily.com, 11/15/07]

Ninety minutes before 24-year-old Matthew Murray went on a shooting spree at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., he wrote about his intentions on a Web site for people who had left Pentecostal and fundamentalist religious groups. [cnn.com, 12/11/07]

QUOTE: "We live in a global, YouTube, MySpace culture. If you are inclined toward violent, antisocial behavior, what's a better way to leave your mark than on the Internet?" —Tom Nolan, a professor of criminal justice at Boston University [usatoday.com, 11/8/07]

How many 18- to 24-year-olds have a social networking profile? According to a survey by Zogby International, 78%. And data from online information service Hitwise indicates that for those in that age group, networking sites rank No. 1 in terms of users' online priority, followed by search engines, Web-based e-mail and porn sites. [time.com, 11/5/2007; Reuters, 11/6/2007]

Among young adults, pornography is losing the social stigma previous generations once attached to it, according to a study by Brigham Young social sciences researcher Jason Carroll (published in the Journal of Adolescent Research). Carroll and his colleagues studied 813 college students from six different schools. The results: 86% of young men reported viewing pornography in the last year, and 20% said they looked at it every day or nearly every day. Among women, 31% indicated they'd viewed porn in the last year, with only 3.2% saying they did so weekly or daily. But nearly half of the young women said that viewing X-rated material was an acceptable expression of one's sexuality. Researchers found that those who used porn regularly were more likely to indulge in other risky behaviors, such as drinking binges and sex with multiple partners. [usatoday.com, 12/12/07]

QUOTE: "I thought that when we showed Superbad to audiences, we would start an ongoing debate about how dirty should the movie be. And at the very first screening, nobody in the audience had any issues with anything in the movie in the numbers that would make you change it. I couldn't believe it. I thought we would be debating so many set pieces and language and cutting things. And there was nothing." —filmmaker Judd Apatow [Entertainment Weekly, 8/17/07; usatoday.com, 8/19/07]

QUOTE: "Who can believe there is anything more to say about Britney Spears at this point. But, alas, there is. Spears has come to represent something—something important enough that it keeps rearing its head. … She embodies the disdain in which this culture holds its young women: the desire to sexualize and spoil them while young, and to degrade and punish them as they get older. Of course, she also represents a youthful feminine willingness—stupid or manipulated as it may be—to conform to the culture's every humiliating expectation of her. ... Wonder why your daughters have eating disorders and hate their bodies? Maybe because they're reading reports that label the thin young women dancing around in a bra and panties physically unappealing and obese. … It's a sickening covenant that seems, more and more, the building block of our pop-culture representation of young femininity." —Salon contributor Rebecca Traister, on Britney Spears' highly criticized "comeback" performance during MTV's 2007 Video Music Awards [salon.com, 9/12/07]

QUOTE: "When I went into this business I never knew how 'fat' or 'ugly' I was. I never felt that there was something wrong with me. But in the world of Mode magazine, 99% of us are Ugly Bettys. It's interesting that the show is called Ugly Betty, not Fat Betty—but everyone assumes that the ugliness comes from me as a person not being skinny."—America Ferrera, star of ABC's Ugly Betty [CosmoGIRL!, 2/07]

QUOTE: "When did rehab become such an acceptable part of the celebrity narrative—an all-purpose escape from scandal and, for an increasing number of public figures, a badge of honor? ... For celebrities, the journey to rehab frequently follows a formula: Erratic or destructive behavior yields gossip-column space about so-and-so's 'cry for help,' and within days a publicist is issuing a press release stating that the celebrity in question has 'voluntarily checked herself into rehab.' Completing rehab is now the secular version of being 'born again'—stars emerge 'healthy' and eager to discuss their conversion experience." —Christine Rosen, a fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center and Wall Street Journal contributor [opinionjournal.com, 3/2/07]

QUOTE: "In The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien fused his ardent Catholicism with a deep, nostalgic love for the unspoiled English landscape. C.S. Lewis was a devout Anglican whose Chronicles of Narnia forms an extended argument for Christian faith. Now look at [J.K.] Rowling's books. What's missing? If you want to know who dies in Harry Potter, the answer is easy: God. ... In choosing Rowling as the reigning dreamer of our era, we have chosen a writer who dreams of a secular, bureaucratized, all-too-human sorcery, in which psychology and technology have superseded the sacred." —Time columnist Lev Grossman [Time, 7/23/07]

QUOTE: "'My books are about killing God.' So said Philip Pullman, author of The Golden Compass, the movie version of which is soon to be released. One expects that religious parents will keep their children away from the film. 'But why?' the question arises from liberals. 'What are you afraid of?' My children losing God, especially before they have a firm hold on Him, that's what. At some point they will question the existence of God. I did. It's normal to do so. I want more than anything else I want for my children, even their own happiness in this life, for them to believe in God, who is their salvation. If you believe in God, and that the loss of God is the worst thing that can happen to a person, then you would sooner give your child a rattlesnake to play with than expose him or her at an early age to the work of a man who openly says he wishes to destroy God in the minds of his audience." —beliefnet.com contributor Rod Dreher [beliefnet.com, 11/2/07]

Disney's current cultural juggernauts are no longer only animated characters, but television shows and music aimed at tweens. Last year, Disney Channel's hit High School Musical was seen by more than 100 million viewers worldwide, and the show's soundtrack was the best-selling album in the United States; the franchise is predicted to generate $500 million in revenue in 2007. Other Disney Channel faves, such as Hannah Montana and The Cheetah Girls are similarly potent among young fans. Gary Marsh, president of entertainment for Disney Channel Worldwide, says that "television is not the end game. It's the launch pad" for the company's prefab, preteen offerings. [usatoday.com, 4/5/07]

QUOTE: "Thank you, Don Imus. You've given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem. ... While we're fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I'm sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent's or Snoop Dogg's or Young Jeezy's latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos." —Kansas City Star columnist Jason Whitlock [kansascity.com, 4/11/07]

MTV and AP published the results of 2007's Youth Happiness Study, which offers a revealing look at what today's 13- to 24-year-olds value. The survey asked, "What one thing in life makes you most happy?" The top five answers to this open-ended question were spending time with family (20%), spending time with friends (15%), spending time with a spouse or loved ones (11%), children (6%) and a relationship with God (5%). When asked specifically about relationships with their parents, 72% said that this important connection made them either "very happy" or "somewhat happy." In comparison, 51% said their "religious or spiritual life" made them very or somewhat happy. [AP-MTV Youth Happiness Poll, 4/16-23/2007; AP, 8/20/07]

QUOTE: "For the past couple years, I've been unloading lots of bad news on people. It happens during our youth culture seminars at the point were I summarize some overarching trends that are—to be honest—quite troubling. ... [Here's] bullet point No. 1—'More pain and brokenness.' Those four words summarize how the collective lot of children and teens has declined. ... Bullet point No. 2—'Younger and younger.' Marketers refer to this as 'age compression.' Simply stated, the stuff that people my age dealt with when they were 18 or 19 years old is now the stuff that kids as young as 8 and 9 are having to deal with ... long before they should ever have to. ... Bullet point No. 3—'Any kid, anywhere, any time.' The negative cultural forces in today's world are no respecter of persons. It doesn't matter who you are, where you go to church, what type of school you go to, etc. There's not one kid who is immune." —Christian youth-culture expert Walt Mueller [cpyu.org, 12/14/07]