Does The Violence On Television Effect Our

Children Essay, Research Paper

“Children don’t naturally kill. It is a learned skill. And they learn it from abuse and violence in the home and, most pervasively, from violence as entertainment in television, the movies, and interactive video games,” (Oliver Stone, 1995). Children today can see someone get shot or killed on the television and mimic that act at very young age. But it is not until the age of about 8 or 9, that the children actually understand what is going on.(Oliver Stone, 1995)

Violence is defined as “any overt depiction of the use of physical force, or the credible threat of such force, intended to physically harm an animate being or a group or beings.” (Salt lake Tribune, 1996)

Many experts believe that if television technology had not been developed there would be 10,000 fewer homicides in the U.S, 70,000 fewer rapes, and 700,000 fewer assaults causing injury. These are the findings to a recent study from the Journal of the American Medical Association.(1997)

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, a report confirmed that violent programs on television lead to aggressive behavior by children and teenagers who watch those programs.

Children begin to notice and react to TV very early. By the age of three, children will willingly watch a show designed for them 95% of the time and will imitate someone on television as readily as they imitate a live person (Parke and Kavanaugh, 1977). The average time children spend watching television rises from about two and a half-hours at the age of five to about four hours a day at age twelve. During adolescence, average viewing time drops off to three hours a day (Liebert and Sprafkin,1988)

Young children do not process information in the same way as adults. Nor do they have the experience or judgement to evaluate what they see. For example, children between the ages of six and ten may believe that most of what they see on TV is true to life. Since they watch a lot of TV, this makes them particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of television.

Psychological research has shown three major effects of seeing violence on television:

1. Children may become less sensitive to pain and suffering of others.

2. Children may be more fearful of the world around them.

3. Children may be more likely to behave in aggressive or harmful ways towards others.

Children who watch TV are less aroused by violent scenes than those who only watch a little: in other words, they’re less bothered by violence in general, and less likely to see anything wrong with it. One example: in several studies, those who watched a violent program instead of a nonviolent one were slower to intervene or call for help when, a little later, they saw younger children fighting or playing destructively.

Children often behave differently after they’ve been watching violent programs on TV. In one study done at Pennsylvania State University(Eron, 1986), about 100 preschool children were observed both before and after watching television; some watched cartoons that had a lot of aggressive and violent acts in them, and others watched shows that didn’t have any kind of violence. The researchers noticed real differences between the kids who watched the violent shows and those who watched the nonviolent ones.

“Children who watch the violent shows, or even just “funny” cartoons, were more likely to hit out at their playmates, argue, disobey rules, leave tasks unfinished, and were less willing to wait for things than those who watched the nonviolent programs,” says Aletha Huston, Ph.D., now at the University of Kansas.

The results of studies on the effects of televised violence are consistent. By watching aggression, children learn how to be aggressive in new ways, and they also draw conclusions about whether being aggressive to others will bring them rewards (Huesumann and Eron, 1986). Those children who see TV characters getting what they want by hitting are more likely to strike out themselves in imitation.

Even if the television character has a so-called good reason for acting violently (as when the police officer is shown shooting down a criminal to protect others), this does not make young children less likely to imitate the aggressive act rather than when there is no good reason for the violence (Liss, Reinhart and Fredrickson, 1983).

Children who prefer violent television shows when they are young have been found to be more aggressive later on, and this may be associated with trouble with the law in adulthood, (Huesmann, 1986). Strong identification with a violent TV character and believing that the TV situation is realistic are both associated with greater aggressiveness (Huesmann and Eron, 1986). In general, boys are more effected by violent shows that girls are (Lefkkowitz, Eron, Walder and Huesmann, 1977).

Besides making children more likely to act aggressively, violence on television may have other harmful effects. First, it may lead children to accept more aggressive behavior in others (Drabman and Thomas, 1974). Second, it may make children more fearful as they come to believe that violence is as common in the real world as it is on television (Bryant, Careth and Brown, 1981).

But television is not always a negative influence. There is strong evidence that children’s shows that were de

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