By the time she was seven, Sarah had witnessed countless murders and numerous horrifying acts of violence ranging from spousal abuse to violent beatings, rape and other atrocities of war and gang violence. You may ask yourself, where could this child have grown up? Was it some war-torn country? Could it have been some country lacking the securities of decent law enforcement where criminals are free to roam and tyrannize innocent citizens? How do children manage to grow up under these circumstances, you ask yourself. But wait, Sarah is your neighbor. Nearly every day you see her and her brothers getting off the bus in the afternoon and running into their house. They aren't a violent family, and they haven't moved from some ravaged country. Sarah is just the average school child whose preferred after-school activity is television viewing. This year she will spend 1500 hours in front of the television set. Compare that figure with the 900 hours she will spend in her classroom at school. She even has her own television set in her room like more than a third of the young children her age (Feig 2). Averaging three to four hours of viewing a day, by the time she completes elementary school, she will have taken in more than 100,000 acts of violence and 8,000 murders. Oh, but it's just entertainment, right? Wrong, our children are facing a threat that should not be ignored. Television comes directly into our homes, and its influence needs to be addressed and dealt with. FCC Chairman Newton Minow said, "In 1961 I worried that my children would not benefit much from television, but in 1991 I worry that my grandchildren will actually be harmed by it" (qtd. in Kaufman 4).
Let's consider the fact that the average c...
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...990. ERIC. EBSCO Publishing. WVUP Parkersburg Library. 6 Nov. 2003 <http://web17.epnet.com/citation.asp?tb=1&_ug=dbs+0%2C3+ln+en%2Dus+sid+D92816D0%2D0D55%2D4295%2D9F0F%2D98A9CE1BD6F3%40sessionmgr3%2Dsessionmgr4+836A&_us=bs+guidelines++for++family++television++viewing+db+0%2C3+ds+guidelines++for++family++television++viewing+dstb+KS+hd+0+hs+0+or+Date+ri+KAAACBZB00020421+sm+KS+ss+SO+2780&fn=1&rn=3>.
Kaufman, Ron. "How Television Images Affect Children." Kill Your Television home page. 6 Nov. 2003 <http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/children.html>.
Miller, Karl E. "Children's Behavior Correlates with Television Viewing." American Family Psychologist. Feb. 1, 2003. FINDarticles.com. WVUP Parkersburg Library. 6 Nov. 2003 <http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m3225/3_67/97132843/p1/article.jhtml?term=children%27s+behavior+correlates>.
Children are like sponges they repeat and act of everything they see. Especially if they see it every day in their lives. Studies have shown over sixty percent of television shows being shown contain some form of violence. Sadly the media who markets these shows don’t see the problem that they are causing in today’s society. The media corrupts these innocent lives, and leads them to make hasty decisions that end up hurting themselves and others. Not knowing what they’re doing. For example the television shows Ridiculousness and Jackass. Although, they have a parental control censorship, a parent won’t always be around to see what their children are watching. These shows are so violent and children often follow what they do. There are people working hard to fight this though. For example on Xfinity on demand they have a parental control button where you can lock everything with violence and to control what your child watches. This is a big step and shows that there is some positivity in this massive
Eron, L.D. (1963). Relationship of television viewing habits and aggressive behavior in children. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 193-196.
Everyone’s seen the classic cartoons. Wile E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner around a bend, only the Roadrunner turns, but our comedic--and usually stupid--villain doesn’t. So, he falls from a height of what looks like about 500,000 feet, only to become a small puff of smoke at the bottom of the canyon. After all, if what happens to you when you fall from that height were to have happened to Mr. Coyote, that would have been a very short lived cartoon series. Maybe this example is an exaggeration, but the idea is the same: violence comes streaming into our homes every single day through our TVs not to be viewed, but to be devoured. It’s been proven that sex and violence sell. For those of us who can tell the difference between reality and fantasy, the effect of TV violence is miniscule. But for our children--who think when the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers come to the local shopping mall, that it’s the biggest event since Bert told Ernie he snores too loud--the violence seen on TV seems like a logical reaction to life’s problems. And that’s a problem within itself. The impact of televised violence on children is only a slice of the pie that is the problem with the endless stream of violent acts on TV.
Patel, R. (2010, November 3). Children and the Media: The Effects of Movies on Children. Retrieved March 23, 2014, from Loving Your Child: http://www.lovingyourchild.com/2010/11/children-media-exposure-effects-movies-children/
For a long time now the debate has been, and continues to be, as to whether or not violence on television makes children more violent. As with all contentious issues there are both proponents and detractors. This argument has been resurrected in the wake of school shootings, most notably Columbine and Erfurt, Germany; and acts of random violence by teenagers, the murders of two Dartmouth professors. Parents, teachers, pediatricians, child psychiatrists, and FCC Chairmen William Kennard and former Vice President Al Gore say violent TV programming contribute in large part to in violence in young people today. However, broadcasters and major cable TV providers like Cox Communication say that it is the parent’s fault for not making it clear to their kids as what they may or may not watch on TV. The major TV networks and cable providers also state it is the TV industry’s fault as well for not regulating what is shown on TV. So who is the guilty party in this argument of whether or not TV violence influences of the behavior young people in today’s society?
In 1973, Thomas Elmendorf, an emergency room physician, made a speech to the American Medical Association about the increase in violence behavior among young adults and it’s correlation to violence on TV. In it he cited that “Murder is the fastest growing cause of death in the United States. The annual rate of increase exceeded 100 percent between 1960 and 1974.” He also goes on to explain that by the time a child graduates high school, they have spent an astonishing 18,000 hours in front of the TV, not to mention other forms of media, versus 15,000 hours in the classroom. Elmendorf also elaborates that within those 18,000 television hours, a young adult will have witnessed “18,000 murders and countless highly detailed incidents of robbery, arson, bombings, shootings...
addition the average American child will witness over 200,000 acts of violence on television including 16,000 murders before the age of 18 (DuRant, 445). Polls show that three-quarters of the public find television entertainment too violent. When asked to select measures that would reduce violent crime “a lot”, Americans chose restrictions on television violence more often than gun control. Media shows too much violence that is corrupting the minds children, future leaders of our society. In a study of population data for various countries sh...
White, A. V. (2006). Television Harms Children. Opposing Viewpoints. Television. San Diego: Greenhaven Press. (Reprinted from Mothering, 2001, 70)
Television has become a big part in children’s day-to-day lives especially in the 20th century. Children in this century rely on television to keep them entertained and educated instead of entertaining and educating themselves by participating in activities, which will teach them a lot more in life then the actual television. There is no doubt that children are most easily influenced by television because of the different content that they watch as well as the amount of time consumed watching TV. The television does have an emotional and intellectual development on children but this all depends on the content that they’re watching and the way that they absorb the information that the show is trying to send out. Different programs will portray
... for children. Children are exposed to 20,000 advertisements a year. The average child watches 8,000 televised murders and 100,000 acts of violence before finishing elementary school. By the time children graduate from high school, those numbers more than doubles. Furthermore, television is shown to influence attitudes about race and gender. Pro-social and anti-social behaviors are influenced by television.
Children in their adolescents years watch a great amount of TV each week and it is almost inevitable that they will start to be influenced by what they see on their television. They will see diffe...
There are many facts that show how children are affected by television. The most obvious is the effects that television has on the brain. 'Television interferes with the development of intelligence, thinking skill and imagination.';(LimiTv) A huge element of thinking is taking from what you already know and deciding how it applies in different situation. School makes you do this, but television does not. Michael and Sheila Cole, sociologist, say that 'Children socialized to learn from television had lower than normal expectations about the amount of mental effort required to learn from written texts, and tended to read less and perform relatively poorly in school.';(Development of Children 24) Which means that it takes very little effort to follow a television show and kids are raised on television believe that it takes less effort to learn from television rather than books because they have been 'spoon-fed'; information by television. 'Opportunities for a child's imagination to develop are also denied by habitual viewing.'; (Neural Activity and the Growth of the Brain) Children need some unstructured time to allow imagination skills to form by thinking about a book or story, a conversation, or an event.
How TV Affects your Child? Kids Health. October 2011. Web. The Web.
Children can be influenced and impacted in many ways whether it is from their parents, peers, and even strangers. One thing many people don’t realize is that many children, nowadays, are actually being influenced by the media, meaning they are being affected by different media sources, such as television and the internet. The question is whether the sources of media, television and the internet has a positive effect or a negative effect on children, and which source of media has a bigger effect.
By the time a child reaches the age of one, they see about 200,000 acts of violence on television. (Nakaya, 3). The Media has been becoming more and more violent over the years. A poll in an issue of Times Magazine, from 2005, showed that 66 percent of Americans think that there is an abundant amount of graphic acts of violence on televisions (Nakaya, 18). People are exposed to thousands of acts of violence through video games, television, and movies. Many studies show that media violence increases violent behavior in in humans. Studies show, violent video games, and graphic television have physiological effects on children. The government has very few regulations on media violence. Some people believe the government shouldn’t limit content because others might be insulted by its material. Media violence is such a broad topic and has such a large presence in daily lives, so we cannot simple get rid of it. The Federal Communications Commission stipulates, “By the time most children begin the third grade, they will have spent the equivalent of three school years in front of a television set.” Even though the government shouldn’t censor the media, Media violence is becoming a serious issue because it is becoming more violent, it makes people behave violently, and it has little regulations.