ence several days after media stimuli (Baron and Reiss, 1985, pp. 352 4). Although the data is not conclusive, the findings do point to the media and resultant imitative behavior as a trigger mechanism at peak times with individuals somewhat prone to suggestion. Adolescents and children fall in this category since they are often considerably more impressionably than many adults. In fact, adolescents often view the media as more of an extension of their own reality, and are similarly unaware of the extreme consequences that imitative behavior may have (Patros and Shamoo, 1988).
As early as 1977 it was discovered that high frequency adolescent television viewers were far more prone to neurotic behavior than those who had more outside activities (Hendry and Patrick, 1977). Correspondingly, systematic evidence also exists that violent television stories trigger imitative deaths within the population at large. This evidence statistically correlated that after the presence of nonfictional suicide stories, an increase is evident in imitative suicide and su
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