Media Violence
Psychological research has shown three major effects of seeing violence on television. The three major effects that many parents world wide fear are children may become More aggressive and behave in harmful or hazardous to others. Be less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others, and children may be more fearful of the world around them. Violent programs on television lead to aggressive behavior by children and teenagers who watch those programs.
Children begin watching television at an early age, sometimes as early as six months, and are ardent viewers by the time they are two or three years old. The general pattern of viewing is one of the steady rise in the number of hours viewed from early childhood to preadolescence and then a sharp drop in viewing during the adolescent years. According to audience rating surveys, the typical American household has the television set on for more than seven hours each day, and children age 2 to 11 spend an average of 28 hours per week viewing. There is a growing concern in this country about teenage violence and how it is connected to the violence seen on the television. The impressionable youth of America somehow fall victim to spending many hours a day watching television and is exposed to violence. Studies show that the average child has witnessed eight thousand murders before they actually finished elementary school. Most of the shows that the younger generations watch contain some violence.
Several years ago when Power Rangers was first Broadcasted, it had a great effect on the younger population concerning violence. Many children began trying to imitate these so called “Heroes.” Three out five children, eight-six percent males had a tendency to want to rough house with the other children and or had outbursts of violence. Of course, conditions in society, does not make it easy to pull a child away from the television. Parents work and most families cannot afford to have a parent stay home and watch the children.
This situation is understandable and does not necessarily mean that parents do not care for their children. Parents regardless of the situation should try to be as involved as much as possible. Parents should take time out to speak to their children about certain programs they might come across while viewing the television. Parents should also view programs with their children so they can get a better understanding of what their children see when they turn on the television.
Television with its far reaching influence spreads across the globe. Its most important role is that of reporting the news and maintaining communication between people around the world. Television's most influential, yet most serious aspect is its shows for entertainment. Violent children's shows like Mighty Morphing Power Rangers and adult shows like NYPD Blue and Homicide almost always fail to show human beings being able to resolve their differences in a non-violent manner; instead they show a reckless attitude that promotes violent action first with reflection on the consequences later. Contemporary television creates a seemingly insatiable appetite for amusement of all kinds without regard for social or moral benefits (Schultze 41). Findings over the past twenty years by three Surgeon Generals, the Attorney General's Task Force on Family Violence, the American Medical Association, the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and other medical authorities indicate that televised violence is harmful to all of us, but particularly to the mental health of children (Medved 70-71).
stop allowing TV to be the baby-sitter and sole educator of their children. TV is a medium for entertainment, not
With television violence more prevalent than ever before, parents and professionals have been concerned about this type of programming adversely affecting behavior in children. While thousands of studies have been completed on this subject, with most of them showing a direct connection between media violence and belligerent behavior, the ensuing information will show the inadequacies of such theories by further scrutinizing these points of interest:
"Television and Children (Child Development Institute)." Child Development Institute - Keeping Parents Informed on child development, psychology, parenting. Child Development Institute, 2000-2010. Web. 03 Feb. 2010. .
The controversy over whether or not violence portrayed on television actually affects children or not has been playing itself out for nearly three decades. When some of the first results came out in the 60s and 70s that made the first connections between aggressive behavior and viewing televised violence, the TV and movie industries denied that there was a connection. When studies found the same thing in the 80s, the FCC opposed any regulation (Hepburn). A writer for Direct Ma...
Three ways in which media violence can negatively affect children are it makes kids show less sympathy to themselves or victims of violence, it glamorizes abuse, and it mocks those who do not practice violence to achieve the goals.
One study, done by a panel of experts, showed that when youth are exposed short term to violent movies, television and video games that there is an increase in aggressive thinking and behavior. Their studies also show a long term effect into adulthood when individuals are continually exposed to violent media growing up, with spouse abuse and other aggressive acts (Huesmann). I personally remember growing up playing violent video games such as Halo and hearing, ...
Some people believe that it should be banned from stations that show children?s programs to prevent the exposure of those children. Sometimes children see a great amount of violence on television, they begin to think that this is right and start to imitate the acts that they see on television, which are not the things that the parents want the children to learn from. One example of this is a thirteen-year-old boy who shot his best friend?s father and then put salt in the wounds. When he was asked why he did this he said that he had seen the same thing on a movie the day before. Psychological research has shown three major effects of seeing violence on television: Children may become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others. Children may be more fearful of the world around them.. Children may be more likely to behave in aggressive or harmful ways toward others. Children who watch a lot of TV are less aroused by violent scenes than are those who only watch a little; in other words, they're less bothered by violence in general, and less likely to anything wrong with it.
television has gradually become the most influential media in the development of different patterns of behavior of the viewers, children and adolescents worldwide have grown together with the evolution of the television market. Various studies indicate that the relationship between television and behavior exists, but it has been difficult to identify any causal link. the effects are many and mostly negative. Much of the research has been conducted to test the relationship between television and aggressive behavior, because in some studies on social learning summits conducted by Bandura, Ross and Ross (1963) found that when children were exposed to aggressive models, imitate this kind of behavior in later game situations, especially when involving toys similar to those that were in the televised scenes. Most agree that further research there is a high correlation between exposure to the environment and the aggressive and violent behavior, so does the acceptance of violence of others (Bandura, 2002). Laboratory studies also indicate that when children are exposed to violent programs later act more aggressively (Paik & Comstock, 1994), it raises blood pressure (Huesmann et al., 1994) and fight more with playmates . In this direction, a study by Boyatzis and Matilla (1995) focused on the effects of a popul...
The first part is the effects on infants. Infants or children up to 18 months old can “Pay attention to an operating television set for short periods of time, but the attention demands a great effort and infants are more interested in their own activities.”1 Even when it seems that they are focusing on the television, infants will usually not be able to comprehend what is going on. They take it as a bunch of “Fragmented displays of light and sound”, which they can only recognize and put together certain pieces and characters. Although there is no evidence yet as to the effect of media violence on infants, there is still evidence that infants may imitate some behavior that they have seen on television.
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.
Television violence causes destructive behavior in children, however; television can be a powerful influence to young viewers in our society. Unfortunately, much of today's television programming are very violent. Many researchers like scientists, pediatricians, and child researchers in many countries have studied to find out what it is about television violence that makes it such a big affect on the way kids act and behave. Sometimes, children think that is a normal thing in our real life, by watching only a single violent program, which can increase aggressiveness on children and become violent, aggressive, and vicious.
For example, if a child is watching a movies that contain violent acts, that can have some bad side effects. One of these effects can be carelessness. The child can become less worried about others and what is going to happen to them; they may not recognize it as violence. A study by Cullingford reports, “when people were shown killings and then heavily prompted, most did not think of it as violence. The frightening truth was that ‘objectionable content’ had become so acceptable that it was invisible” (Simmons 150). The other effect can be violent behavior. Child may want to become violent, because then they will be “feared” by every one, just like the people that they see in television. Berkowitz concluded, from his experiment, “ television violence does arouse aggressive behavior, especially if viewers believes that aggression is justified” (Simons 150). Another effect can be revenge. This is probably the biggest message that violent movies are sending to children. In almost all of the movies we see people killing one another just to avenge someone that was either killed or harmed by a “bad buy,” or they themselves were harmed. This may influence children that have been humiliated in schools or molested. At some point, they may explode with rage to get revenge for what had happened to them.
Does violence on television have a negative effect on children and teenagers? The violence shown on television has a surprisingly negative effect. Television violence causes children and teenagers to become less caring, to lose their inhibitions, to become less sensitive, and also may cause violent and aggressive behavior.