26/06/2026
A Statement on Preventing Violence Among Filipino Youth: Choosing Prevention Over Cure (by Dr. Dimalanta)
In the span of a single week, our nation watched three of our schools — meant to be among the safest places for a child — become scenes of violence. A shooting in Tacloban claimed the lives of three students and wounded many more. Two separate stabbing incidents in Cavite left children, some as young as Grade 5, injured and traumatized. Elsewhere, yet another incident has reminded us that this is not an isolated event, but a pattern we can no longer afford to look away from.
As a Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrician, I write not to add to the noise of blame, but to offer a different starting point: prevention, not just cure. We have spent the past week reacting — deploying counselors after the fact, tightening gates after the damage is done, debating the age of criminal liability after a child has already been harmed or has already harmed another. All of this matters. But none of it answers the harder question: how do we keep these moments from happening in the first place?
Why This Is a Developmental Question
Every child accused in these incidents was between 14 and 18 years old — squarely within a stage of brain development where the emotional and impulse-driving centers of the brain mature years ahead of the prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for judgment, future-thinking, and impulse control. This is not an excuse. It is a fact that should shape how we intervene. Adolescents are biologically wired to feel intensely, act quickly, and seek belonging — and when that need for belonging is denied at home, in the classroom, or among peers, some children become dangerously vulnerable to whoever, or whatever, offers them validation instead.
Bullying has been cited as a contributing factor in more than one of these cases. So has long-standing personal grudge and conflict left unresolved. These are not new problems. What is new is the environment in which today’s children process them.
The Digital Dimension We Cannot Ignore
Initial investigations into the Tacloban shooting have raised concerns about a suspect’s exposure to a graphically violent game, and authorities are now examining whether online networks may be grooming or radicalizing vulnerable minors toward violence — a phenomenon child-safety researchers have been tracking globally for years, well before it reached our shores.
As clinicians, parents, and educators, we need to understand three things about the digital world our children inhabit:
1.Repeated exposure to graphic violence — whether in games, videos, or livestreams — can desensitize a developing brain to real-world harm, particularly when that exposure happens without adult context or conversation.
2.Social media and online gaming spaces can become recruitment grounds. Anonymity, algorithmic targeting, and the promise of belonging make isolated, aggrieved, or bullied youth especially susceptible to people and groups who validate anger and rehearse violence as a solution.
3.Excessive, unsupervised screen time correlates with poorer sleep, weaker face-to-face social skills, and reduced capacity for emotional regulation — all of which are protective factors against violence when they are intact, and risk factors when they erode.
None of this means banning screens outright, nor does it mean villainizing every child who plays a video game. It means we can no longer treat a child’s digital life as separate from their developmental life. It is part of it.
A Call to Collective, Preventive Action
For families: Stay close to your children’s digital world the way you would their physical one. Know what they play, watch, and who they talk to online. Watch for withdrawal, sudden secrecy, fascination with violence, or signs of being bullied — and respond with curiosity and connection, not punishment alone.
For schools: Move from reactive security (guards, ID checks, bag inspections) to proactive systems — adequate guidance counselors, real enforcement of the Anti-Bullying Act, threat-assessment protocols that take early warning signs seriously, and a culture where a child who is struggling is identified long before a crisis.
For pediatricians and clinicians: Make psychosocial and digital-habit screening a routine part of well-child visits, not an afterthought. Early identification of bullying, depression, social isolation, or behavioral red flags belongs in our consultation rooms, not just in police reports after the fact.
For policymakers and the tech sector: Age-appropriate content regulation, meaningful platform accountability for grooming and radicalization activity, and investment in child and adolescent mental health services are not optional extras — they are public health infrastructure.
For our faith and broader community: Every child involved in these tragedies — victim and offender alike — remains a child made in the image of God, deserving of protection, dignity, and the chance to heal and grow. Our response must hold accountability and compassion together, never one without the other.
We cannot legislate, install security cameras, or counsel our way out of a crisis we do not first understand. Prevention demands that we look upstream — at the bullying left unaddressed, the isolation left unnoticed, and the digital spaces our children inhabit largely unsupervised — long before the moment a child picks up a weapon.
Our children are not asking us to fix them after they fall. They are asking us to walk closely enough beside them that they never have to fall alone.
In Christ,
Francis Xavier Dimalanta, MD
Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrician
Head, PPS Task Force on Mental Health for Children and Youth
Issued jointly by A Child’s DREAM Foundation, Inc. and the Philippine Association for the Gifted
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