Children today are facing more behavioral problems than their parents did. In an increasingly sexualized and violent society, children manifest aggressive tendencies sine very young ages, whether it’s self-harm, hurting animals, hurting other more vulnerable people and many forms of self-destruction (drugs, alcohol etc).

In order to help these children and get them back on the right track, in order to avoid school shootings, suicides and other criminal activities, we must stop trying to blame music and video games and turn our attention to their emotions and their brain.

Bullies are, unfortunately, a growing phenomenon in today’s schools, on the internet and generally in society. After extensive social studies were conducted, it was proved that in most cases, bullies came from an abusive background and disordered families. Others had a history of violence in their family, and even a genetic predisposition, namely the XYY syndrome, common amongst serial killers.

The most popular theory is that bullies hurt other people to make themselves feel better. To test this theory, scientists took eight aggressive boys, with ages ranging from 16 to 18 years old, and another group of eight boys, without violent tendencies and from the same age group. After they were subjected to watching a series of videos involving people who were getting physically abused, both groups showed cerebral activity. The problem was that the violent group showed activity in the brain’s pleasure center, besides the other areas.

The researchers were slightly taken aback by this discovery, which proved a very popular theory about bullies. Now, it’s a scientific fact that violence produces pleasure in some people. The behavior is also common in those involved in theft, substance abuse, sexual abuse and other destructive behaviors.