Opinion / Columnist
How our love for violent entertainment is breeding a violent Zimbabwe
48 mins ago | Views
Entertainment may seem like harmless fun, but the evidence shows it can unravel the very fabric of a society.
Three recent stories from Zimbabwe have pierced my heart this past few days-tragic and brutal, and wholly too familiar.
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In Harare, a man allegedly slaughtered his 21-year-old wife with a kitchen knife, consumed by suspicions of infidelity.
In Dzivarasekwa, a Grade Five girl was raped twice by her mother's ex-partner while fetching water or gathering materials, only revealing the horror after her mother noticed suspicions in her behavior and police got involved.
And in my hometown of Redcliff, the killing of 40-year-old Rosemary Diana at a local bar, stabbed and beaten after rejecting a man's advances, has hit me hardest.
These events are not isolated-it is as though the blood of our nation runs red in the streets.
As I reflect on these tragedies, a question gnaws: why is violence-physical and sexual-so startlingly on the rise in Zimbabwe and many parts of the world?
Increasingly, I suspect that our obsession with violent, sexually graphic entertainment, especially among younger generations, plays a role.
Though the issue is unequivocally complex, research demands we examine this strand.
We cannot ignore that other factors-such as poverty, familial instability, social inequality, and drug abuse-intersect with this trend, complicating the picture of why violence escalates.
Substance abuse, in particular, has a well-documented role in lowering inhibitions, impairing judgment, and increasing impulsivity, all of which can contribute to violent behavior.
Yet even here, the influence of violent entertainment cannot be dismissed.
Research suggests that individuals under the influence of drugs are more likely to act on aggressive scripts already internalized from repeated exposure to violent media.
In other words, violent content primes the mind: it provides ready-made scenarios for conflict resolution through aggression, making it more likely that someone intoxicated will resort to violence.
The combination of chemical impairment and a culture saturated with brutality creates a dangerous synergy, turning entertainment-induced scripts into lived, often lethal, reality.
Media scholars speak of "cultivation theory," where long-term exposure to mediated violence distorts our perceptions of reality-fostering what George Gerbner called the "mean world syndrome," in which viewers believe the world is far more dangerous than it is.
This constant bombardment cultivates catatonic empathy.
Psychologists since Albert Bandura's landmark Bobo Doll experiments of the 1960s have shown that children model aggressive behavior they observe-even when the aggressiveness is in a filmed or cartoon setting.
The implications are deep: children absorb and internalize aggression from what they see, even in media that many parents assume is harmless.
Cartoons, animated shows, and seemingly innocent programs are often riddled with violence, teaching young minds that conflict can be solved with force and that aggression is normal, acceptable, or even entertaining.
Over time, these repeated exposures shape behavior, desensitize empathy, and create mental scripts for responding to real-world situations with hostility rather than reason.
Later longitudinal research has confirmed that young children heavily exposed to violent media are more likely to engage in criminal behavior, assault partners, or land in trouble as adults.
Further evidence indicates that exposure to violent media isn't a trivial risk-children who see media characters wielding firearms are measurably more likely, when encountering those weapons in real life, to handle them recklessly or dangerously.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and other institutions affirm that media violence links to aggression, desensitization, and diminished empathy-even if not the sole cause.
Desensitization itself-where repeated exposure dulls emotional response-is well documented.
Individuals who regularly witness violent scenes, even in seemingly "innocent" cartoons or entertainment, show lower physiological and emotional reactions.
Over time, this numbing effect can lead people to hesitate or fail to intervene in real-life violent situations, showing less empathy toward victims of abuse.
It is no wonder, then, that in many cases people would rather watch-and even record on their phones-violent incidents than step in to help, having become spectators conditioned to accept aggression as normal or entertaining.
Meanwhile, journalists and researchers have found that witnessing traumatic content online can provoke real vicarious trauma, with symptoms resembling anxiety, depression, and even PTSD.
Studies show that the human brain often cannot fully distinguish between real-life events and mediated or fictional depictions of violence.
Neural and emotional responses are triggered similarly, meaning that repeated exposure to violent entertainment-even when known to be "just a show"-can elicit genuine fear, stress, and aggressive conditioning.
Over time, this blurring of reality and fiction reinforces desensitization, normalizes brutality, and alters the way individuals perceive and respond to violence in the real world.
Real-world statistics underscore the urgency.
Macrotrends reports a rise in Zimbabwe's crime rate from 4.98 per 100,000 in 2020 to 6.14 in 2021-a 23 percent increase.
More recent ZIMSTAT figures reveal that in the last quarter of 2024, police recorded 232,593 offences; in the first quarter of 2025 that surged 33.7 percent to 310,876 incidents-lifting the national crime rate from 1,532 to 2,048 crimes per 100,000 population.
These are not trifling fluctuations-they are alarms.
These rising tides of violence ripple class, age, and location-even into my own hometown.
The man accusing his wife of cheating and violently murdering her.
The child raped while fetching water.
The woman killed in a place meant for social gathering.
These are profound societal ruptures.
Entertainment producers, meanwhile, persist in treating violence and erotic power as uncontroversial draws; they rationalize that consumers can separate fiction from action.
Yet we know the boundary between screen and psyche is porous.
As already mentioned, repeated exposure to dramatized violence-especially when glamorized or fetishized-rewires expectations, erodes empathy, and can provide scripts for aggression.
We must also question why today's youth gravitate toward such content, when my generation drew solace and stimulation from intellectual, civic-minded media-documentaries, investigative content, current affairs.
The affordances of social media, streaming platforms, and gaming mean that violent and sexualized entertainment is omnipresent, unmoderated, algorithmically prioritized.
Young people are not just watching-they are immersed, consuming volumetric doses of shock, conflict, and erotic reframing.
Scholars in Australia recently warned that children as young as four are internalizing violent, misogynistic sexual content from online pornography-acting out unsafe, abusive behaviors with peers-and that technology firms have failed to moderate or remove such content effectively.
In the UK, a Youth Endowment Fund study found 60 percent of children saw real-world violence on social media in a single year, with damaging normalization taking root.
Even when violent media apologists claim empathy and reason, we cannot ignore the data: it increases aggression, fuels desensitization, raises emotional numbness, and-crucially-interacts with broader structural vulnerabilities: poverty, unemployment, weak institutions, trauma, intergenerational suffering.
Yet mass media producers seem largely unconcerned.
The pursuit of clicks, views, profits, and sensational content outpaces responsibility.
This is not merely a Zimbabwean problem-it is global.
Societies everywhere face a culture where violence is spectacle, eroticized on demand, normalized across digital lifetimes.
How do we reclaim a healthier path?
It starts with media literacy, parental engagement, and systemic policy.
We must regulate the most harmful content, educate youth on its risks, and reinvigorate cultural spaces where empathy, civility, justice, and curiosity are celebrated-not suppressed by violence.
Parents, in particular, must stop treating violence as harmless entertainment, even in cartoons or animated programs often assumed to be innocent, and should be vigilant about what their children watch, play, or engage with online.
They need to recognize that repeated exposure-even in seemingly playful media-can shape attitudes, desensitize empathy, and normalize aggression.
Zimbabwe can no longer afford the pretense that entertainment is innocuous; it is time for families, educators, and policymakers to confront this reality and actively protect our children from the subtle yet profound dangers of violent content.
Our children, our women, our communities pay the price.
These crimes in Harare, Dzivarasekwa, and Redcliff are not aberrations-they are heartbreak incarnate.
They should move us from despair to action.
The link between violent entertainment and societal aggression is not simplistic-but robust evidence and local data demand that we treat it with urgency.
If the screen bleeds into the soul of a society, then we must heal that wound before the reflection becomes reality.
© Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to WhatsApp or Call: +263715667700 | +263782283975, or email: mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com, or visit website: https://mbofanatendairuben.news.blog/
Three recent stories from Zimbabwe have pierced my heart this past few days-tragic and brutal, and wholly too familiar.
To directly receive articles from Tendai Ruben Mbofana, please join his WhatsApp Channel on: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08
In Harare, a man allegedly slaughtered his 21-year-old wife with a kitchen knife, consumed by suspicions of infidelity.
In Dzivarasekwa, a Grade Five girl was raped twice by her mother's ex-partner while fetching water or gathering materials, only revealing the horror after her mother noticed suspicions in her behavior and police got involved.
And in my hometown of Redcliff, the killing of 40-year-old Rosemary Diana at a local bar, stabbed and beaten after rejecting a man's advances, has hit me hardest.
These events are not isolated-it is as though the blood of our nation runs red in the streets.
As I reflect on these tragedies, a question gnaws: why is violence-physical and sexual-so startlingly on the rise in Zimbabwe and many parts of the world?
Increasingly, I suspect that our obsession with violent, sexually graphic entertainment, especially among younger generations, plays a role.
Though the issue is unequivocally complex, research demands we examine this strand.
We cannot ignore that other factors-such as poverty, familial instability, social inequality, and drug abuse-intersect with this trend, complicating the picture of why violence escalates.
Substance abuse, in particular, has a well-documented role in lowering inhibitions, impairing judgment, and increasing impulsivity, all of which can contribute to violent behavior.
Yet even here, the influence of violent entertainment cannot be dismissed.
Research suggests that individuals under the influence of drugs are more likely to act on aggressive scripts already internalized from repeated exposure to violent media.
In other words, violent content primes the mind: it provides ready-made scenarios for conflict resolution through aggression, making it more likely that someone intoxicated will resort to violence.
The combination of chemical impairment and a culture saturated with brutality creates a dangerous synergy, turning entertainment-induced scripts into lived, often lethal, reality.
Media scholars speak of "cultivation theory," where long-term exposure to mediated violence distorts our perceptions of reality-fostering what George Gerbner called the "mean world syndrome," in which viewers believe the world is far more dangerous than it is.
This constant bombardment cultivates catatonic empathy.
Psychologists since Albert Bandura's landmark Bobo Doll experiments of the 1960s have shown that children model aggressive behavior they observe-even when the aggressiveness is in a filmed or cartoon setting.
The implications are deep: children absorb and internalize aggression from what they see, even in media that many parents assume is harmless.
Cartoons, animated shows, and seemingly innocent programs are often riddled with violence, teaching young minds that conflict can be solved with force and that aggression is normal, acceptable, or even entertaining.
Over time, these repeated exposures shape behavior, desensitize empathy, and create mental scripts for responding to real-world situations with hostility rather than reason.
Later longitudinal research has confirmed that young children heavily exposed to violent media are more likely to engage in criminal behavior, assault partners, or land in trouble as adults.
Further evidence indicates that exposure to violent media isn't a trivial risk-children who see media characters wielding firearms are measurably more likely, when encountering those weapons in real life, to handle them recklessly or dangerously.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and other institutions affirm that media violence links to aggression, desensitization, and diminished empathy-even if not the sole cause.
Desensitization itself-where repeated exposure dulls emotional response-is well documented.
Individuals who regularly witness violent scenes, even in seemingly "innocent" cartoons or entertainment, show lower physiological and emotional reactions.
Over time, this numbing effect can lead people to hesitate or fail to intervene in real-life violent situations, showing less empathy toward victims of abuse.
It is no wonder, then, that in many cases people would rather watch-and even record on their phones-violent incidents than step in to help, having become spectators conditioned to accept aggression as normal or entertaining.
Meanwhile, journalists and researchers have found that witnessing traumatic content online can provoke real vicarious trauma, with symptoms resembling anxiety, depression, and even PTSD.
Studies show that the human brain often cannot fully distinguish between real-life events and mediated or fictional depictions of violence.
Neural and emotional responses are triggered similarly, meaning that repeated exposure to violent entertainment-even when known to be "just a show"-can elicit genuine fear, stress, and aggressive conditioning.
Over time, this blurring of reality and fiction reinforces desensitization, normalizes brutality, and alters the way individuals perceive and respond to violence in the real world.
Real-world statistics underscore the urgency.
Macrotrends reports a rise in Zimbabwe's crime rate from 4.98 per 100,000 in 2020 to 6.14 in 2021-a 23 percent increase.
More recent ZIMSTAT figures reveal that in the last quarter of 2024, police recorded 232,593 offences; in the first quarter of 2025 that surged 33.7 percent to 310,876 incidents-lifting the national crime rate from 1,532 to 2,048 crimes per 100,000 population.
These are not trifling fluctuations-they are alarms.
These rising tides of violence ripple class, age, and location-even into my own hometown.
The man accusing his wife of cheating and violently murdering her.
The child raped while fetching water.
The woman killed in a place meant for social gathering.
These are profound societal ruptures.
Entertainment producers, meanwhile, persist in treating violence and erotic power as uncontroversial draws; they rationalize that consumers can separate fiction from action.
Yet we know the boundary between screen and psyche is porous.
As already mentioned, repeated exposure to dramatized violence-especially when glamorized or fetishized-rewires expectations, erodes empathy, and can provide scripts for aggression.
We must also question why today's youth gravitate toward such content, when my generation drew solace and stimulation from intellectual, civic-minded media-documentaries, investigative content, current affairs.
The affordances of social media, streaming platforms, and gaming mean that violent and sexualized entertainment is omnipresent, unmoderated, algorithmically prioritized.
Young people are not just watching-they are immersed, consuming volumetric doses of shock, conflict, and erotic reframing.
Scholars in Australia recently warned that children as young as four are internalizing violent, misogynistic sexual content from online pornography-acting out unsafe, abusive behaviors with peers-and that technology firms have failed to moderate or remove such content effectively.
In the UK, a Youth Endowment Fund study found 60 percent of children saw real-world violence on social media in a single year, with damaging normalization taking root.
Even when violent media apologists claim empathy and reason, we cannot ignore the data: it increases aggression, fuels desensitization, raises emotional numbness, and-crucially-interacts with broader structural vulnerabilities: poverty, unemployment, weak institutions, trauma, intergenerational suffering.
Yet mass media producers seem largely unconcerned.
The pursuit of clicks, views, profits, and sensational content outpaces responsibility.
This is not merely a Zimbabwean problem-it is global.
Societies everywhere face a culture where violence is spectacle, eroticized on demand, normalized across digital lifetimes.
How do we reclaim a healthier path?
It starts with media literacy, parental engagement, and systemic policy.
We must regulate the most harmful content, educate youth on its risks, and reinvigorate cultural spaces where empathy, civility, justice, and curiosity are celebrated-not suppressed by violence.
Parents, in particular, must stop treating violence as harmless entertainment, even in cartoons or animated programs often assumed to be innocent, and should be vigilant about what their children watch, play, or engage with online.
They need to recognize that repeated exposure-even in seemingly playful media-can shape attitudes, desensitize empathy, and normalize aggression.
Zimbabwe can no longer afford the pretense that entertainment is innocuous; it is time for families, educators, and policymakers to confront this reality and actively protect our children from the subtle yet profound dangers of violent content.
Our children, our women, our communities pay the price.
These crimes in Harare, Dzivarasekwa, and Redcliff are not aberrations-they are heartbreak incarnate.
They should move us from despair to action.
The link between violent entertainment and societal aggression is not simplistic-but robust evidence and local data demand that we treat it with urgency.
If the screen bleeds into the soul of a society, then we must heal that wound before the reflection becomes reality.
© Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to WhatsApp or Call: +263715667700 | +263782283975, or email: mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com, or visit website: https://mbofanatendairuben.news.blog/
Source - Tendai Ruben Mbofana
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