How Children are Positively and Negatively Impacted by Television

Television violence is it a contributing factor to aggressive behaviour in children. For the last few decades attention has been placed on this issue, and it is a pretty major topic as the majority of violence occurs during prime time and in cartoons. The National Coalition on Television Violence has conducted surveys concerning the ranking of us television shows. Its results showed The Fox network shows the most violent programming, and was ranked number one in a recent study. The US television networks are not a far cry away for the Irish as most show shown there are also on offer here to our kids so these studies would very much relate to us as well. Fox broadcasts over eleven violent acts per hour by offering programs such as Americas Most Wanted. How can we be angry or dislike this type of programming as it is responsible for capturing over 243 fugitives? Although it shows violence, it is also dedicated to ending violence. And yet Fox also shows the animated programme American Dad the story of a clumsy C.I.A. agent who kills people for fun or just because they are annoying him. Parents need to explain to their children the different kinds of violence that can be shown on television. Parents must accept television into their home and explain the violence that is occurring. TV violence is not new, we have been hearing about TVs affects on children for quite some time. It is now the time to discover if TV violence does affect our children or not. There is a difference in watching the news and hearing a story about a murder than watching a cartoon of a coyote chasing a roadrunner. Most likely a child will be more inclined to identify with the cartoon than the news story. Children establish heroes on programs and identify with t...

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... not a fair playing field e.g. Haribo’s cartoon type advertising a child would not be able to tell the difference of this from a regular cartoon.

Dr Brian Young on the other hand believes children should not be protected from advertising this is because he feels that they need to learn how to deal with it. Yet Dr. young’s research shows us that children under the age of four do not grasp the concept of advertising and that they still won’t start to be able to fully understand it until they are at least eight years old. It is when they turn 12 that their understanding of it can be compared to the understanding of an adult.

RTE does have some guidelines there is no advertising aloud during the showing of pre-school programmes and for the rest of the time it is around two to three advertisements per break.

So all in all there have been many Against and many for.