TV Violence

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Recommended: violence on TV contributes to violent behavior in children essay.

The average American child watches an average of three to four hours of television daily. Over a year’s time that add up to about 12,000 violent acts witnessed on television (Television…Children). After a child has witnessed a violent program, they tend to act different.
Parents need to be able to distinguish between dramatic or imaginative play and imitation. During dramatic play children create new and varied roles which represent different experiences in their lives. However, during imitative play children simply repeat stereotyped roles from the screen, often repeating scripts or sound bites from the television. In drama play language may be made up, use codes, and special names.
Numerous studies have been done in the last thirty years about the problems with viewing programs that contain violence. The majority of research done has been on television/cartoon violence; focusing on how viewing violence causes aggressive behavior in the viewer (The Effects…Violence). One study, done by Athena Huston, Ph.D., used 100 preschool children. Half of them were males and the other half females. The little children were observed before and after they viewed violent and non-violent shows. The group that viewed the violence were more likely to hit out at their playmates, argue, disobey class rules, and were less willing to wait for things and turns than the group that viewed non-violent material (Violence and Television). It seems that children who view large amounts of violence on television are likely to become desensitized to all kinds of violence-televised or real, and more likely to behave in aggressive or harmful ways towards others (Violence on Television). Children become physiologically aroused and express impulses during and after seeing it on television. For example, the Power Rangers, Batman, and many other cartoons show fighting is good. The characters “beat up” the bad guys and get praised for doing so. While the child is watching he/she sometimes acts out what is being seen. No one dies in these shows, however, the wrong idea about fighting and violence is being taught to our kids (Television Violence). A study investigated the effects of the “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” on aggression. It found that young children in a group who watched a televised episode committed seven times more aggressive acts in a two minute play period than did a control group (Television…Children:Boyatizis,1995).
As children grow they are able to distinguish between fantasy and reality. This usually happens around the age of seven or eight.

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