Our Children Are Not Content: Why We Must Stop Glorifying Teen Crime in Media

Dear reader — whether you are a parent, a teacher, a grandparent, an older sibling, or simply someone who cares about the kind of world we are building for the next generation — this letter is for you. What I am about to share with you has kept me up at night. It has moved me to speak out. And I hope, with everything I have, that it moves you too.

I want to talk about something that has been quietly, steadily, and dangerously normalizing itself into the daily lives of our children: the media that glorifies, dramatizes, and profits from teenage crime.

I am not talking about educational documentaries that hold systems accountable, or thoughtful dramas that explore why young people struggle. I am talking about the shows that make gang life look glamorous. The social media videos that rack up millions of views showing teenagers fighting, brandishing weapons, and committing crimes — filmed, shared, and monetized as entertainment. The true-crime specials that turn real juvenile offenders into cult figures. The streaming series that portray criminal teenagers as antiheroes worthy of admiration.

This content is not harmless. It is not "just TV." It is shaping the minds of a generation that is already in crisis — and the data proves it.

THE CRISIS WE ARE ALREADY LIVING IN

Before we can talk about the media, we have to understand the landscape our children are navigating right now. Because they are not navigating it from a place of strength. They are navigating it on the edge.

In Canada, 51% of students now report moderate-to-serious psychological distress — a figure that has doubled over the past decade. (CAMH, 2024)
1 in 6 Canadian students in grades 7 to 12 had serious thoughts of suicide in the past year. (CAMH, 2024)
70% of teenagers have encountered real-life violent content online in the past year. 29% have seen posts glorifying attacks on young people. (Youth Endowment Fund, 2024)
86% of Ontario youth use social media every single day — and over 20% spend more than 5 hours on it daily. (PMC Canada, 2023)
Read those numbers again. Slowly. These are not statistics from a distant country or a past decade. These are our children. Right now. Struggling, scrolling, and being fed a relentless diet of content designed not for their wellbeing — but for engagement metrics and advertising revenue.

WHAT THE SCIENCE ACTUALLY SAYS

I have heard people say: "It's just entertainment. Children know the difference between real life and TV." With respect — the research says otherwise.
A landmark study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health (2022) followed 1,586 young people from childhood into adulthood. The findings were unambiguous: children with the highest violent media diet were 2.45 times more likely to engage in seriously violent behavior years later. Even after adjusting for other social and environmental factors, the association held.
The American Academy of Pediatrics — alongside the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the American Psychological Association — issued a joint statement confirming that media violence is a documented risk factor to children's physical and mental health. These are not fringe opinions. These are the consensus positions of every major medical and psychological body in North America.
Decades of research by psychologists Rowell Huesmann and Leonard Eron tracked children from elementary school into adulthood and found that children who watched many hours of violence on television were more likely to be arrested and prosecuted for criminal acts as adults.

The American Psychiatric Association has further documented that regular exposure to violent media makes children less empathetic, less sensitive to others' suffering, more fearful of the world, and more prone to aggressive thoughts and behaviors. A global meta-analysis of 24 studies across Canada, the USA, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and Singapore confirmed this pattern holds across cultures and continents.
We are not just watching our children be entertained. We are watching them be desensitized — quietly shaped by a media environment that was never designed with their best interests in mind.

THE CONTENT THAT SHOULD CONCERN ALL OF US

Let me be specific, because vague concerns are easy to dismiss.
Streaming dramas that romanticize juvenile crime — series that portray young criminals as magnetic antiheroes, where violence is stylized, consequences are minimal, and the lifestyle is made to look aspirational. These shows are accessible to teenagers with a single click, at any hour, with no meaningful safeguard.
Social media fight videos and viral "trend" content — the Youth Endowment Fund's 2024 research of 10,000 teenagers found that more than half had seen footage of physical fights between young people online. Over a third had seen content involving weapons. A quarter had encountered material featuring gang activity — not in a documentary context, but as shareable, viral content served up by algorithms to children as young as 13.
True-crime content exploiting real juvenile offenders and victims — documentaries and docuseries that reconstruct the crimes of real teenagers in graphic detail, often turning offenders into recognizable public figures while their victims and families relive trauma with no end in sight. Many of these subjects were minors at the time of their crimes. Their worst moments are packaged and sold indefinitely, without their meaningful consent.
The copycat pipeline — law enforcement agencies including the FBI have formally identified media coverage as a risk factor for copycat violence among youth. PBS News reporting from 2024 documented multiple cities where police confirmed social media played a direct role in organizing and amplifying teen violent crime. These are not theoretical risks. They are documented, ongoing patterns.

THE ARGUMENT THE INDUSTRY ALWAYS MAKES — AND WHY IT FALLS SHORT

The entertainment industry has one reliable response to these concerns: "We are simply giving the public what it wants."
But here is what that argument ignores. In a survey commissioned by the American Medical Association, two-thirds of all adults — and 75% of adults with children — said they had walked out of a movie or turned off the television because the content was too violent. The public does not want this. Parents do not want this. And yet the content keeps coming, because the platforms profit from engagement — and nothing drives engagement like shock, violence, and outrage.

"Giving people what they want" is not a defense when what is being served causes harm. The tobacco industry made the same argument. So did pharmaceutical companies pushing opioids. We do not accept profit as a justification for public harm in those industries. We should not accept it here.

WHAT WE ARE CALLING FOR

I want to be clear: this is not a call for censorship. Honest, thoughtful storytelling — including stories that explore why young people turn to crime, what systems fail them, and what real justice looks like — has enormous value. That is not what we are objecting to.
What we are asking for is accountability.
1. Regulation with teeth. We are calling on the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and Members of Parliament to enact enforceable guidelines governing content that depicts minors in criminal contexts — whether scripted or real — without age-appropriate safeguards and a clear rehabilitative intent.
2. An end to monetizing harm. Social media platforms must be prohibited from monetizing content that depicts real minors engaged in violent or criminal acts. They must be required to proactively remove such content — not simply wait for user reports.
3. Privacy and dignity for juvenile subjects. Real teenagers featured in true-crime content must have the right to have their likenesses and stories removed from commercial distribution when they reach adulthood — or upon formal request.
4. Research-informed policy. Increased funding for research into the effects of crime-focused media on adolescent development, and a requirement that policy decisions be informed by that research.

A PERSONAL WORD

I am not writing this as a professional or a public figure. I am writing this as someone who looks at the young people around me — bright, curious, tender-hearted — and feels a deep, aching concern for what they are being handed.
We are living in a moment where 1 in 5 students is harming themselves on purpose. Where 1 in 6 had thoughts of suicide last year. Where the majority of our teenagers are reporting levels of psychological distress that, a decade ago, would have been considered a national emergency. And we are responding to this crisis by continuing to flood their screens with content that normalizes violence, glorifies crime, and tells them — in a hundred subtle ways — that cruelty is exciting and consequences are optional.
Our children are human beings first. They are not a market. They are not content. They are not ratings. They are the people we are responsible for — and they are watching us decide how much they are worth.
If this resonates with you — if you have looked at a young person in your life and felt a quiet, building fear about the world they are growing up in — then I am asking you to take one small, concrete action today.
Sign the petition. Share it. Talk about it. Let the people with the power to change this know that we see what is happening — and we refuse to be silent.

 Sign here: https://c.org/BLtq7WyYL6

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

- Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey. 2024. camh.ca

- Youth Endowment Fund. Children, Violence and Vulnerability 2024. youthendowmentfund.org.uk

- Ybarra, M.L. et al. Violent Media in Childhood and Seriously Violent Behavior in Adolescence and Young Adulthood. Journal of Adolescent Health, 2022.

- American Academy of Pediatrics. Media Violence. Pediatrics, 2009.

- American Psychological Association. Violence in the Media. apa.org

- PMC Canada. Heavy Social Media Use and Psychological Distress Among Adolescents. 2023.

- PBS NewsHour. Social Media's Role in the Rise of Youth Violence. May 2024.

- World Health Organization Europe. Teens, Screens and Mental Health. September 2024.

I am someone who cares deeply about the world our children are inheriting, the values they are being shaped by, and the society we are collectively responsible for building.

- Ruby Dalvina