The Influence that Television Has on Children

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One of the main influences that television is believed to have is on children’s behaviour, in particular causing aggression and violence. Perhaps one of the most controversial issues surrounding television, violence on television and the effects it has on viewers has been heavily researched and studied over the years. It has been found that children see around 10,000 acts of violence per year on television (Gerbner, G cited in Morgan 2002). Gerbner’s (ibid) findings show that since the 1960s the number of violent acts have been stable, and in children’s programmes there are about 25 violent acts per hour.
Some theorists argue viewing violence on television has an adverse effect on children and over the years a number of studies have consistently found that there is a correlation between viewing television violence and increased aggression and violence in children. Comstock (cited in Huesmann, Eron 1986) found in a laboratory environment that children who viewed a violent short film would then be observed behaving more aggressively immediately afterwards as they played compared to the children who did not view the violent film. This is further backed up in a study conducted by Atkin, Greenberg, Korzenny, and McDermott (1979, cited in Murray 2008), which found that “heavy TV-violence viewers were more likely to choose physical and verbal aggressive responses to solve hypothetical interpersonal conflict situations”.
One reason that some studies have suggested as to why children may become more aggressive after watching violent television programmes is ‘observational learning’. Huesmann and Eron (1986) says that observational learning applies to television as “children learn to behave aggressively by imitating violent actors on tele...

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...ion. In: Toby Millar ed. Television Studies. London British Film Institute pg. 80-83
Michael Morgan, 2002. Violence and Effects Research. In: Toby Millar ed. Television Studies. London British Film Institute pg. 11-13
John P. Murray. (2008). Media Violence: The Effects Are Both Real and Strong. American Behavioural Scientist. 51 (8), Pg. 1212-1230.
Andy Ruddock , 2002. Uses and Gratifications Research In: Toby Millar ed. Television Studies. London British Film Institute pg. 70-73
Schnabel, J. (2009), "The Black Box", NATURE, Jun 1, pp.765-768.
Weigel, R. and Howes, P. (1982). Race relations on children's television. The journal of Psychology, 111(1), pp.109--112.
Susan D. Witt Ph.D. (2000). Childhood Education. The Influence of Television on Children’s Gender Role Socialization: A Review of the Literature. School of Family and Consumer Sciences. 75 (5), Pg.322-324.

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