THAT a pack of children aged 11 to 12 could nearly strangle a five-year-old is, sadly, not surprising. Humans are the cruellest species on earth and children have always had the potential for viciousness, even children from “good” homes. But there are features of modern life that make such atrocities more likely.

A toxic chemistry can occur when gangs of pre-teen youngsters are left unsupervised by adults, which they are more likely to be today, when truanting or after school, with parents still at work.

Their knowledge of right from wrong may disappear, leaving a Universe unlimited by moral boundaries. If they come from homes where there is disharmony between parents, the mother is depressed and where discipline is erratic and physical, the natural desire to impress each other and to experiment may take them to extreme acts of cruelty.

In 1950, even in boys from poor homes, identity was far more constructed — brother, son. In the individualist society that we live in now, identity is achieved through education and career in many homes, but via more dubious routes in others. Children in low income homes are more likely to find an identity through violence.

This fundamental shift, from the collectivist to the individualist society, partly explains how 6,000 crimes of violence against the person in England and Wales in 1950 became 252,000 in 1998. But perhaps of equal or even greater importance has been screen violence — whether on TV, in films or computer games.

In 2003 results were published of an American study that had measured quantity and type of violent viewing among more than 450 children in the 1960s, and followed up what happened to them. For the first time it was shown that the degree of children’s early identification with violent characters and the extent to which they perceived these acts as real predicted violent behaviour 15 years later.

It is probably extremely rare that a child loses grip on reality so completely that it watches a scene on TV and simply re-enacts it soon afterwards. But the suspension of disbelief when viewing almost certainly loosens what can already be a weak grasp of the difference between fantasy and reality in vulnerable children.

We should not be surprised if, from time to time, the fantasies become reality and we reap the poisonous harvest that they sow.

Oliver James is a clinical psychologist and the author of They F*** You Up

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