Television Violence

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Recommended: Television as a socialization agent for children

Television Violence

On April 20, 1999, a tragic event took place in an environment where children should feel safe. At Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, twelve students and one teacher were tragically gunned down by two boys, one seventeen years old, and one eighteen years old. Recently in Michigan, a first grader brought a gun to school and shot and killed a fellow classmate.

These tragedies can be seen as a result of many different factors, such as violence in the home, access to deadly weapons, and extreme anger towards society. A main reason for these school tragedies is the violence children view every day on television.

The amount of violence that children see on television is overwhelming. According to Mortimer Zuckerman's article titled "Victims of TV Violence," by the age of eighteen children will have seen 200,000 acts of violence on television, including 40,000 murders (Zuckerman 64).

The television has become the nation's storyteller, babysitter, preacher, and teacher. With this as the case, the images and ideas that children view on the television set quite an impression on their young minds. By the time children reach the first grade, they will have already watched 5,000 hours of television. By the time they graduate from high school, they will have viewed over 19,000 hours of television. These numbers are even more astonishing to think about, considering when a child graduates they will have had only 13,000 hours of school (Zuckerman 64).

A major reason for the impact on these children is that at the point they start watching these violent programs they do not yet know what is real and what is not. The children get the idea that violence does not have negative consequences. In 47 percent ...

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...s at schools, such as the Columbine catastrophe, can be seen as results of television violence. As parents and adults, monitoring the amount of television shows that children watch is an essential responsibility. By monitoring the amount of television viewed and teaching children about what violence really is, they will be less likely to commit a violent act some day.

Works Cited

Kalin, Carla. "Television, Violence, and Children." Diss. Oregon U, 1997.

Sweet, D. & Singh, R. "TV Viewing and Parental Guidance." Education Consumer Guide. Available: http://inet.ed.gov/pubs/OR/consumertv/html (April 2, 1997).

Zuckerman, Mortimer. "Victims of TV Violence." U.S. News & World Report 2 August 1993: 64.

"TV Violence and Kids." The Education Digest September 1996: 23-26.

"Studies Report Watching TV News Triggers Fear in Kids." JET 7 September 1999: 25-26.

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