When the Videotapes Arrived

On Violent Images, Children’s Silence, and a Society Losing Its Bearings

There are moments in history when a society changes almost without noticing.

No revolutions.
No dramatic speeches.
No sirens.

Only new images slowly entering people’s homes.

That was how it felt when the video player arrived in Norway during the 1980s.

At first, it was simply a new machine placed beneath the television in the living room. A technological novelty. A new way of watching films. But within only a few years, it changed far more than entertainment. It altered the rhythm of everyday life, the relationship between children and adults, between freedom and control, between the private home and the expanding global media market.

Video stores appeared everywhere.

Small rooms with neon lights, handwritten signs, and shelves packed with horror films, pornography, violent exploitation movies, thrillers, and videotapes nobody seemed to know the origin of. Often there was little control, little regulation, and very little reflection about what children and adolescents were actually being exposed to.

I began working as a social worker in 1981. Shortly afterward, I was asked by the municipal child welfare board to investigate allegations of illegal video rentals, with particular focus on what children and young people were able to rent and watch.

At the time, I believed this would mainly be a matter of laws and regulations.

It was not.

It was about human beings.

When Adults Lost Oversight

Today, it is difficult to understand how rapidly the video market expanded.

The law lagged behind.
Parents lagged behind.
Schools lagged behind.
Child welfare services lagged behind.

Suddenly, films that previously had been inaccessible could now be rented and brought directly into ordinary homes.

The reports from that period documented large numbers of violent films and pornographic material circulating in Norwegian video stores. Many shops lacked proper registration systems and meaningful control. In some places, explicit and violent material was rented out almost openly.

But what affected me most was not the stores themselves.

It was the young people.

The Boys in the Darkened Room

I met a group of boys I have never completely forgotten.

They had created their own private “video club.” Around ten boys. Several of them had, in practice, stopped attending school. Instead, they spent nearly entire days sitting in a dark room watching videotapes.

Twelve hours.
Every day.

I sat with them in that room.

The curtains were closed. The video player ran almost continuously. One film after another. Murders. Rapes. Torture. Pornographic films mixed with violent exploitation movies where people were abused and killed.

The room smelled of dust, cold cigarette smoke, and overheated electronics.

The boys barely reacted.

They commented on the special effects.
Laughed occasionally.
Ate potato chips.
Changed videotapes.

While I sat there feeling physically nauseous.

That was the first time I truly began to understand what desensitization might mean—not as a theory, not as an academic concept, but as something that slowly happens to human beings when certain images are repeated again and again.

Not because these boys were evil.

On the contrary.

Many of them were vulnerable young people. Several struggled at school. Some came from troubled homes. Others had already begun withdrawing from ordinary social life.

Video had become a refuge.

But at the same time, something was happening to their emotional world.

When violence becomes everyday background noise, something changes inside a person.

What Happened to Me

At first, I believed I could remain outside what I was studying.

That is something helping professions often teach you.

Observe.
Document.
Analyze.
Maintain professional distance.

But the body does not always maintain distance.

As I carried out more investigations throughout the 1980s, I also began to change. Certain images returned at night. I slept poorly. I felt anxiety, inner tension, and growing unease.

Eventually, I myself had to seek conversations with a psychologist.

At the time, that was difficult to admit.

Because in helping professions, one is often expected to be the person helping others—not the one affected.

But violence affects human beings.
Even when the violence exists only on a screen.

And perhaps this became one of the most important lessons I learned:

Violence does not always lead to violence.

Often, violence leads to anxiety.
To withdrawal.
To emotional silence.
To sleeplessness.
To fear that settles quietly into the body.

This was discussed far less in the public debate. People frequently argued about whether violent films made young people more aggressive. Far less attention was given to fear itself—to what happens to the nervous system, to the images that remain long after the screen has gone dark.

The Quiet Process of Normalization

I still do not believe human beings function mechanically.

There is no simple line connecting violent films to violent actions.

Human beings are far more complex than that.

Yet at the same time, I believe it is naïve to think that images do not shape us.

Human beings are formed by what they live close to.

By language.
By atmosphere.
By repetition.
By rhythm.

When children and adolescents encounter violence again and again, something changes in the structure of experience itself. Not always dramatically. Not always visibly. But gradually.

What first creates discomfort slowly becomes normal.

What once appeared grotesque eventually becomes entertainment.

In a large study conducted for Save the Children Norway in 1991, many young people reported that they no longer had emotional reactions to violence on television. Perhaps this was one of the most serious findings of all.

Not fear.

But the absence of fear.

The Parents Who Did Not Know

It would be easy to make video stores the villains of this story.

Reality was more complicated than that.

Many parents simply did not understand what was happening. They believed they were renting “ordinary films.” Many had little awareness of what their children watched at friends’ houses.

In the 1991 study, young people reported that parents themselves often rented the films they watched. Many children also gained access to restricted or explicit films through older siblings and friends.

The new media landscape evolved faster than the adult generation could understand.

And perhaps this is precisely why those old reports still matter today.

History repeats itself.

Only in new forms.

From VHS to Algorithms

When I reread these reports today, the video player itself almost seems innocent compared to the digital world we now inhabit.

Back then, young people had to physically enter a store.
Today, children carry the entire media market in their pockets.

Back then, we debated explicit films displayed on video shelves.
Today, children encounter pornography through algorithms before parents even realize what is happening.

Back then, people feared violent videotapes.
Today, global technology companies compete relentlessly for children’s attention every second of the day.

Perhaps the video debates of the 1980s were only the beginning of something much larger:
a society in which technological development moves faster than ethical reflection.

The Philosophical Question

Looking back today, I realize this work was never really only about video technology.

It was about human beings.

About children’s vulnerability.
About adult responsibility.
About the kinds of images a society allows to shape childhood.

Practical philosophy is not merely about theories. It is about how human beings are formed through their encounter with the world around them. About how culture slowly becomes lived experience. And how experience, in turn, shapes the way we see other people—and ourselves.

A society is not formed only through laws and economics.

It is also formed through images.

Through stories.

Through what we gradually become accustomed to.

What Still Remains

When I read these reports today, I also encounter a younger version of myself.

A social worker carrying a notebook.
A man entering dark video stores and private screening rooms because he believed knowledge might help protect children.
Someone trying to understand something society did not yet have language for.

I do not believe everything we did during the 1980s was entirely right.
Some of it was certainly shaped by fear.
Some perhaps became moralistic.
Some of it may even have been naïve.

But I believe we saw something important.

We saw that culture is never merely entertainment.

Culture shapes how people feel.
How they see other human beings.
How they understand violence.
How they understand themselves.

The video stores are gone now.

The VHS tapes have long since disappeared.

But the struggle for human attention continues.

And perhaps this remains the most important question of all:

What happens to a human being who gradually becomes accustomed to images no human being was ever meant to live close to?

References

Pettersen, K. T. (1985). Report concerning the rental of illegal video films in Sandefjord. Sandefjord Municipality, Norway.

Pettersen, K. T. (1989). Report on the video market in Oslo. Steering Committee for a Better Childhood in Oslo Municipality, Norway.

Pettersen, K. T. (1991). TV, video, and computer games: A report from Save the Children Norway on children’s use of television, video, and computer games. Save the Children Norway