The Harmful Effect of Television on Children and Teen-agers

1284 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Influence of mass media on children

The entertainment that television is now portraying is not exactly what the younger society of America needs to be exposed to, but unfortunately in today's economy that is the only kind of entertainment that sells. There is so much unnecessary exposure to violence, aggressive behavior, and sexual acts now being broadcasted daily on television, movies, music, and even the news. The broadcasting systems are now targeting younger children and teens. The crime rates have skyrocketed due to delinquent juvenile behavior over the past ten years. The whole viewing society is now becoming very tolerant and at ease with sex and violence. Youth and children are picking up on these behaviors daily. Studies have shown that by the age of 18, the average American teen will have viewed around 200,000 acts of violence on television. The violence and sexual content that television and music are now portraying has negatively influenced younger children and teens to commit murder, exhibit aggressive behavior, and become tolerant of violence and sex.

The negative influence television has begun to have on children is unreal. Americans seem to ask themselves what brings on such things as the Columbine shootings, eleven-year-olds murdering toddlers, and an increase in teen rapes. Then, these same people allow their children and teenagers to watch movies like Saw, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Frailty. Irving Kristol is part of the American Enterprise Institute and in 1994 wrote an essay pointing out proof of these influences on teens and children. He used a report done in the United Kingdom on what they called "video nasties" (Kristol) and gave evidence of negative behavior in children who had watched such vulgar and violent shows. He again...

... middle of paper ...

...ry. If the violence and sex are forced to become under control, our society will be a much better place to live and raise our children in.

Works Cited

Grossman, David, and Mary Cagney. "Trained to Kill." Christianity Today Aug. 1998.

08 May 2005 <www.christianitytoday.com>.

Jacoby, Jeff. "A Desensitized Society Drenched in Sleaze." Elements of Argument. Ed. Annette T. Rottenberg. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003. 626-628.

Kristol, Irving. "Sex, Violence, and Videotape." Elements of Argument. Ed. Annette T.

Rottenberg. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003. 610-613.

Palumbo, Frank. "The Social Impact of Music Violence." American Academy of

Pediatrics. 06 Nov. 1997. American Academy of Pediatrics. 09 May. 2005

<www.aap.org/advocacy>.

Schroeder, Ken. "Education News in Brief." The Education Digest Sept. 1998: 74-75.

Show More
Related

  • Inhumanity in Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find and Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

    1127 Words  | 3 Pages

    Shields, Patrick J. "EBSCOhost: Arbitrary Condemnation and Sanctioned Violence in Shirley Jackson's "the Lo..." Vol. 7.No.4 (2004): 411-19. EBSCO Publishing Service Selection Page. Dec. 2004. Web. 15 Nov. 2010.

    Read More

  • Exploiting Stereotypes and Gender Roles in Gaming

    2447 Words  | 5 Pages

    Dill, K. E., Gentile, D. A., Richter, W. A., & Dill, J. C. (2005). Violence, sex, race and age in

    Read More

  • Media Violence: Censorship Not Needed

    1589 Words  | 4 Pages

    Males, Mike. "Why Demonize a Healthy Teen Culture." Los Angeles Times 9 May. 1999. Rpt. in Violence in the Media as "Teenagers Are Not Becoming More Violent." Ed. James D. Torr. San Diego: Greenhaven. 2001. 82-84.

    Read More

  • America Needs Media Censorship

    2275 Words  | 5 Pages

    One of the culprits of criminal behavior is T.V. violence. Violent programs may have a negative influence on those individuals who are already violence-prone, or children who are living through vulnerable periods of their development. Adult violent offenders tend to have shown certain personality features as children, ?one being they tended to have viewed violence on television.? The amount of violence on television continues to grow. ?A typical child watched on television one thousand murders and twenty five thousand acts of violence before finishing elementary school.? When displayed this often, how can people not become desensitized to criminal acts? ?By allowing this type of material to be openly exposed to the public we are endangering safety and society?s values.? Without control of what material is delivered to the masses, we cannot expect people to have a proper sense of right and wrong as they will constantly see the horrific things that happen in the false reality of the media and become immune to feelings of disgust toward such atrocious deeds in real life. Controlling what is viewed on television is the responsibility of the government in order to decrease violence in the real world.

    Read More

  • Violence in Television

    1911 Words  | 4 Pages

    2.Dietz. WH and Gortmacher, SL (1985) Pediatrics, 75,807-812; and Tucker, L.A. (1986) “Adolescent”, 21, 7970806.

    Read More

  • The Negative Effects of Television

    1445 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the argumentative essay “T.V. Addiction” by Marie Winn, Winn relates watching television to having an addiction with drugs and alcohol. The television experience allows us to escape from the real world and enter into a pleasurable and peaceful mental state. When it comes to television, Marie asks the following question: Is there a kind of television viewing that falls into the more serious category of destruction addiction? I believe there is. Why do so many people, instead of doing what they’re supposed to be doing, put everything on hold and just focus on television? I think this is because they want an escape from their problems.

    Read More

  • Deviance and Social Control

    1733 Words  | 4 Pages

    Garland, D. (2008) 'On the Concept of Moral Panic' in Crime, Media and Culture 4(1) pp.9-30

    Read More

  • How Television Viewing Affects Children

    939 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Department of Education states that television is viewed an average of three to five hours per day by children. Too much television can have an everlasting affects on children, such as violent behavior, aggressive behavior, poor school performance, obesity, early sexual activities, and early drug and alcohol use. Television can affect children both physical and psychological (qtd. in Graham 1). Some argue that television does not affect children; it can be very educational

    Read More

  • Television and Media Essay - TV, Violence, and Censorship

    1037 Words  | 3 Pages

    As early as 1958 investigations were being conducted of the effects of television on children. During this time, the researchers found that most of the television content was extremely violent. In almost half of the television hours monitored, the programs main focus contained violence. The common theme that was seen throughout the programs were crime, shooting, fighting, and murder. The universal definition of violence used was, "Any overt depiction of the use of physical force, or the credible threat of such force, to intend to physically harm an animated being or group of beings." In this investigation, Wilbur Schramm concluded that under some conditions, some violent television could effect some children. For the most part, most television is neither helpful or harmful to most kids under most circumstances. As you can see this conclusion is quiet vague, and does not give a lot of crucial information for us to correct and improve. Schramm and his colleagues came up with a solution for parents to provide a warm, loving, secure family environment for their children, and they would have little to worry about.

    Read More

  • Cause and Effect Essay - Causes of School Violence

    2261 Words  | 5 Pages

    A widely accepted cause of the murders committed by children is violence in the media. The parents of three students killed at a high school in Padukah, Kentucky filed a $130 million lawsuit against the entertainment industry because they believe that violence in the media inspired the boy, Michael Carneal, who killed their children ("Media"). To some extent, these parents are correct in their assumption. On average, children watch television 16 to 17 hours per week, beginning as early as age 2 (Strasburger 129). Furthermore, when video games are added, some teenagers may spend as many as 35 to 55 hours per week in front of the television set (Straburger 129). Within these many hours of television viewing, there are many violent scenes. The National Television Viole...

    Read More

  • The Disturbing Role of Television in Accidents and Deaths Involving Children

    1527 Words  | 4 Pages

    “The statistical correlation between childhood exposure to violence in media and aggressive behavior is about the same as that between smoking and lung cancer” (Atkinson, Michael. 59) (put a period after the parenthetical citation, and only include the author’s last name and page number in parentheses) We all know that for anyone who smokes a great deal lung cancer is almost inevitable, this causes great concern because most children spend much of their spare time in front of the television or playing video games. (make more explicit the connection between the effects of smoking and the effects of watching too much TV) Many childhood accidents related to television are in the form of copycat crimes says Michael Atkinson in his article “The movies made me do it”, “Copycat crimes have attained front-burner notoriety, and some day soon Hollywood’s liberty will be pitted against the perceived welfare of American children” (58). Many children’s cartoons such as “X Men” and “PokeMon” tend to be very violent and anger oriented, (semicolon) therefore when children copycat what they see often times they end up hurting themselves or someone else, possibly even causing death.

    Read More

  • The Importance of Censorship

    386 Words  | 1 Pages

    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?

    Read More

  • Effects of Television Violence on Children and Teenagers

    661 Words  | 2 Pages

    Television violence is also a cause of both violent and aggressive behavior in teenage boys. According to the evidence in a study done by Turner, Hesse, and Peterson-Lewis, it was concluded that watching television violence had a long-term increase in aggression in boys (Hough 1). In addition to this study, Dr. William A. Belson evaluated fifteen hundred boys, aged thirteen to sixteen years, and he determined that boys with heavy television exposure are more likely to commit violent acts than other boys (Langone 51). In Belson’s study, he discovered that the effect of each violent act on television was collective, and over time, Belson discovered that the boys engaged in many aggressive acts, including painting graffiti, breaking windows, aggressive play, swearing, and threatening other boys with violence (Kinnear 26).

    Read More

  • Negative Effects of Mass Media on Teenagers

    880 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first effect of mass media on teenagers is violence. Aggressive behavior is the first example of violence in the media. Aldridge argues that, teens who watch violent movies may behave in an aggressive way towards others for example bullying and fighting in school. This is important because there are high risks of teenage developing into aggressive behavior that may last into adulthood if they are not being supervised on what they see on TV (2010). Fearful of the world may also occur for those who watch violence television programs. According to children and television violence, teens that are being over exposed to violent on television may worry about becoming a target of violence. The relevance of this idea is that teenagers will more likely grow up thinking that the world is a scary place and that something bad will happen to them (2008). Imitative behavior is another major effect of seeing violence in the media. According to Weldon, two teens from Johnstown, Colorado, killed a 7 year old girl by beating her to death. The teens claimed that they were imitating moves from a video game called “Mortal Combat.” This is an example case which shows that violence in the video game may lead to an imitating behavior (2007).

    Read More

  • Essay On Effects Of Violence In Movies

    2129 Words  | 5 Pages

    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 ...

    Read More

More about The Harmful Effect of Television on Children and Teen-agers

Open Document