Television Violence and Children's Behavior
Drive-by shootings and school massacres are just two of the many violent past-times of today’s youth. Is television a contributor to this insidious erosion of children's respect for life? Much research that has been done in an attempt to answer this question. The majority of the findings are very similar in content, and the results are grim. Television violence has been shown to cause four major changes in children's behavior: "Increasing aggressiveness and anti-social behavior, increasing their fear of becoming victims, making them less sensitive to violence and to victims of violence, and increasing their appetite for more violence in entertainment and in real life." (AAP Committee) Television is causing a change in America's children, and it is not a change for the better.
If watching television is increasing children's aggressive behavior, then is it also causing a higher crime rate? Once again, the answer is a resounding yes. "Longitudinal studies tracking viewing habits and behavior patterns of a single individual found that 8-year-old boys who viewed the most violent programs while growing up were the most likely to engage in aggressive and delinquent behavior by age 18 and serious criminal behavior by age 30." (Booth, Mullins, Scott, and Woolston) Not only do our children exhibit an immediate reaction to violence in the media but also a long term effect of a higher propensity toward committing crimes. Another population study stated that the homicide rate doubled within ten to fifteen years after the introduction of television into several different locations where television was introduced at different times. (Facts About Media Violence) We are all affect...
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...can child reaches the age of 16, he or she will have witnessed 200,000 acts of violence on television, including 33,000 murders. (Juvenile Crime and TV) Apparently we accept what we see over and over again as normal behavior. We are teaching our children that violence is acceptable by inviting it into our homes everyday. They, in turn, are becoming more violent from the playgrounds all the way to the prisons.
Works Cited
Booth, Vicki, Mullins, Heather, Scott, Erika, and Woolston, Jonathon. "Juvenile Crime and TV." Online. http://staff.gc.maricopa.edu/mdinchak/eng101/juvenile.htm
"Facts About Media Violence." Online. http://www.ama-assn.org/ad-com/releases/1996/mvfacts.htm
AAP Committee on Pediatrics. "Some Things You Should Know About Media Violence and Media Literacy." Online. http://www.aap.org/advocacy/ChildHealthMonth/media.htm
Hepburn, Mary A. "TV Violence! A Medium’s Effects Under Scrutiny." Social Education. Sept 1997: pp244-249. SIRS Researcher. Available <http://researcher.sirs.com/>
Some teenagers go to violent movies and listen to heavy metal and rap music. Some teens argue that they have not killed anyone. These teens are missing the point. Television teaches teens to handle their problems in the wrong way. Some ways include arguing, hitting, abusing, and initiating other violent behavior-sometimes, even killing like what happened in Littleton. Little boys all the way up to teenagers have always loved guns. They started out with BB guns and end up with real guns. Even with gun control there was no way to stop the kids at Littleton. I am also concerned about the disconnection from the parents and the lack of respect for authority. Parents need to take charge and know where their children are and what they are doing. If the kids have no respect and their heads are filled with evil, violence, and sex, why is anyone surprised about this horrible behavior? When children and teens watch all the violence on television, they might forget that it is pretend and think of it as reality.
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?
Television plays a big role on violence. Most of us watch television daily. And what do we see daily on television? The news, about our world surrounded by violence? Movies, that only show shootings, death, and more violence? Even cartoons are violent, like the Simpsons, south park, and even Tom and Jerry, shows specially for our young audience. ...
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...
Emmons, Sasha. "Is Media Violence Damaging to Kids?" CNN. Cable News Network, 21 Feb. 2013. Web. 28 Nov. 2013.
In an article written by Kevin D. Browne and Catherine Hamilton-Giachritsis out of Lancet, dated 2/19/2005, Volume 365 in issue 9460, on page 702 a collection of research shows short-term effects increasing the likelihood of aggressive or fearful behavior in younger children, especially in boys. It also shows research stating that there is a very weak correlation directly between media violence and acted out aggression. This article basically states that violent media being watched by children does impression and arouse some, but does not associate strongly with violent acts. This would help explain the fact that millions of kids watch violent television shows and remain nonviolent.
Summary #1 Television violence, and media violence in general, has been a controversial topic for several years. The argument is whether young children are brainwashed into committing violent real-world crimes because of violent and pugnacious behavior exposed in mass media. In his article “No Real Evidence for TV Violence Causing Real Violence”, Jonathan Freedman, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and author of “Media Violence and Its Effect on Aggression: Assessing the Scientific Evidence”, discusses how television violence, claimed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), does not cause real-world aggression among adolescents. The FCC determined to restrict violent television programming to late night hours only because their “scientific research” proves of increasing aggression among young viewers (Freedman Par. 2).
of violence or tunes into their parents favorite soap opera might find an increasingly amount of exposure to violent acts and sexual content. Children are very vulnerable to such influences and often do not know the difference between right and wrong and the difference between reality and fantasy (Dritz, Russel 1996). As the years go on and television seems to be too censored to most, studies have continued to prove the increasing numbers of children associated with violence and sexual behavior. Although a seemingly older statistic, the Neilson Index averaged American children to watch 18,000 television murders before he or she graduated from high school (Tucker, Larry A. 1988). Could this be a reason for an increasing amount of murders and violent acts among children today?
Kalin, Carla. Television, Violence, and Children. Media Literacy Review. University of Oregon College of Education, 10 May 2003. Web. 16 Oct. 2013.
The regularity and asperity of media violence has dramatically increased over the years. The Media exists in almost every aspect of people’s lives and exposure to violence in the media is becoming a large concern. People are exposed violent acts in the media everyday between video games, movies, and television. Parents are distressed over the fact tha...
Furthermore, television violence causes aggressive behavior in children. Many people believe that children who watch violent television programs exhibit more aggressive behavior than that exhibited by children who do not (Kinnear 23). According to the results of many studies and reports, violence on television can lead to aggressive behavior in children (Langone 50). Also, when television was introduced into a community of children for the first time, researchers observed a rise in the level of physical and verbal aggression among these children (Langone 51). The more television violence viewed by a child, the more aggressive the child is (“Children” 1).
Sometimes, children think that is a normal thing in our real life, by watching only a single violent program, which can increase aggression on children and become violent, aggressive, and vicious. Usually, U.S. children begin watching television at a very early age, sometimes as early as six months, and are eager viewers by the time they are two or three years old. The amount of time that children spend watching television is very interesting because like four hours a day, 28 hours a week, by the time they graduate from high school, children spend more time watching TV than any other activity, besides sleeping. However, children that watch many programs in which violence is very real, parents show no affinity toward violence and that is why the child thinks that violence is not bad. Normally children cannot tell the differences between real and unreal, that is why young viewers are unable to realize that when a character attacks someone it is real and should not be imitated by them.
With the explosion of technology today, access to the media is at your fingertips, anytime, anywhere, and almost 24/7. Video games, movies, cartoons, daily news, websites, music videos, and even in commercials, violence is everywhere, and it becomes harder and harder to avoid. Violence in the media has been increasing and reaching dangerous proportions. According to Report of the Media Violence Commission, the effects are remarkably consistent regardless of type of medium, age, gender, or where the person lives in the world (336). Many studies and researches reveal the empirical evidence that links violence in movies and television shows to aggressive behavior in children, teenagers, and adults. Increasing aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, and fear are three types of negative effects contributed to by violence in movies and television shows. The article, “The Influence of Media Violence on Youth” emphasizes that violent television shows, films, and music reveal unequivocal evidence that media violence increases the likelihood aggressive and violent behavior in both immediately, and in the long term (Anderson, Craig A., 81). Violence now has gone into the mainstream. The Hunger Games, one of the top grossing films in 2013 replete with blood, gore and violence. The Walking Dead was once voted highest-rated entertainment program on TV with horrific violent scenes, killing from stabbing into the heads, bloody corpses, and disturbing, haunting images shown in most of the scenes. CBS’ Criminal Minds is television show with series of scary scenarios showing the violent murders of psychopath people. Worst of all, Silence of the Lambs deals with a psychopath who ...