A beautiful young girl is found dead, blood all over her face, wrapped in a plastic garbage bag. A mill goes up in flames, trapping two people who were lured there by the killer who hopes they burn to cinders. The bullet-ridden body of a detective lies on the floor, the deed done by a mysterious killer. A purported drug dealer is strangled to death; his body flailing and contorted with pain. Two people commit a brutal rape and leave the victim for dead. Why the fascination with violence?
The Amount of Violence on Television According to the renowned psychiatrist Karl Menninger, " We not only tolerate violence it is part of our life. Why over one third of our television programs use it for amusement. There are more than 200 million television sets in America. The average American watches over seven hours a day. For many children, this is more time than they spend in school. The world of television has been alternatively called entertainment and a vast wasteland. It serves as a model of the world around us.
What kind of world does it depict? The message is often one of violence. In 1973, the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, devised a "violence profile" to measure the amount of violence shown on television. The analysts watched over 33 hours of entertainment programs in a sample week and monitored specific acts of violence. The results indicated that some violence was contained in 70 percent of the programs! The violence could be categorized into three types:
- Violence for its own sake
- Overtly graphic views of brutality and human suffering
- The portrayal of anti-social behavior
Later studies found that even shows specifically geared towards children have violence in them. Cartoons averaged eight episodes of violence a show.
The Effect of Television Violence on Children What effect does television have? Television acts as a cross-cultural influence cutting across nationalities and class. It gives people with different values and background common information. Because of the immediacy of the message, it is often seen as another member of the family. What a person sees in terms of images is bound to have an impact on their beliefs and attitudes.
Concern about violence on television began in the earliest days of the medium in the late 1940's. Killings and violence were staples of the early television shows, which featured cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, detectives and murders.
According to the article, Violence in the Media, written by the APA, it provides information on how ferocious television episodes can affect a child’s senses, feelings, and attitude. To be more specific, it can make them become numb, frightened, and more pugnacious due to the amount of violent TV they watch. Furthermore, according to the same article, the APA also wrote, “By observing these participants into adulthood, Huesmann and Eron found that the ones who'd watched a lot of TV violence when they were 8 years old were more likely to be arrested and prosecuted for criminal acts as adults.” Psychologists L. Rowell Huesmann and Leonard Eron held a study that concluded that the result of watching violent television can lead to jail and criminal actions. This will also cause a child to become more aggressive and therefore will become a nefarious person. All in all, the American Psychological Association decided that violent television can shape a child’s disposition. In fact, it can also encourage a child to execute bad deeds and crimes when they become
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).
There is a "general consensus among social scientists that television violence increases the propensity to real-life aggression among some viewers," and yet, paradoxically, "there is presently little evidence indicating that violence enhances program popularity" (Diener & DeFour, 1978). Top government studies insist, "violent material is popular" (Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior, 1972). Differing conclusions may be viable. One leading social psychologist flatly states, "evidence suggests that violence on television is potentially dangerous, in that it serves as a model for behavior -- especially for children" ...
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. ...
When we think of violence, we automatically picture guns and knives being used to kill people. Although this is a part of violence, it’s not the only way a violent situation can arise. Violence can be any harm done to a person through physical contact. Along with guns and knives, this can include one’s own bare hands or any object within proximity. On television, we see every type of violence carried out, whether it be a simple punch or a serial killer who finds pleasure in the violence he causes. Any form of a violent situation that you can think of has most likely been acted out on a television series or movie. TV is written to blow scenarios out of proportion and create unrealistic versions of different scenarios. Instead of a decent conversation to solve a problem, a punch is thrown or a gun is pulled. By portraying these types of solutions, television is promoting violent behavior. The characters in the action, crime or horror shows are actively encouraging these types of behavior. Although these scenes are needed to produce a captivating plot, there needs to be awareness as to the fact that these scenes are being idolized to the wrong audience.
Children spend more time learning about life through media than in any other manner. The average child spends approximately twenty-eight hours a week watching television, which is twice as much time as they spend in school (Dietz, 75). According to the American Psychological Association, the average American child views 8,000 murders and 100,000 other acts of violence before finishing elementary school. In
“Myriad studies show that television violence affect children by desensitizing children to the horror of violence, teaching them to accept violence as a solution to problems, teaching them to imitate the violence they see on the television and leading them to identify with characters seen on television (and thus imitate the characters they identify with) (Parenthood Web).” The amount of violence in television programming is obviously directly related to the amount of violence witnessed by children. The more of a role that television plays in the daily activities the more of a role violence will influence that child. In 1985 alone, 85% of all television programming contained violence, with 92.1% of cartoons aired containing violence. These cartoons generally contain one violent act every three minutes ...
Leo, John. "The Amount of Violence on Television Has Been Exaggerated." Media Violence: Opposing Viewpoints. Ed. William Dudley. San Diego: Greenhaven, 1999.
By the age of 18, the average American has seen 200,000 acts of violence on TV, including 40,000 murders. There are a few potential explanations why people are compelled to watch TV brutality. One of the justifications is the normality or familiarity of disorder. With real life rampage going on close and far from home, TV aggression is a way to cope. If the world was not as cruel as it is today, TV destructiveness would not be as prevalent because it would seem odd to viewers. In other words, the vicious tendencies humankind have lead to the prevalence of TV bloodshed.
While it is not the first medium ever to reproduce violence for entertainment, television has certainly been the most notorious. However, television stations "do not air violence because they want to. They air it because that is what sells. The blame is upon ourselves for the large volume of violence, since they are merely responding to what we want" (Kim). This love for violence has filtered into nearly every television show aired currently. Virtually every television station airs shows, either live action or animated, that involve the characters fighting, arguing, or just acting in a malevolent way towards something or somebody else. The news always carries stories of what crimes have been committed during the day, daytime talk shows and soap operas often involve fighting and conflict, and even children's television is starting to take a more serious, mature twist in its presentations. Shows such as the live action series Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers have been called into question because of the numerous fight scenes and injuries that they depict; however, Power Rangers is one show that does provide a message to children at the end, informing them that the fighting is not real and that they should not imitate the Power Rangers.
Society has been bombarded with violence from the beginning of time. These concerns about violence in the media have been around way before television was even introduced. Nevertheless, there have been numerous studies, research, and conferences done over the years on television, but the issue still remains. Researchers do acknowledge that violence portrayed on television is a potential danger. One issue is clear though, our focus on television violence should not take attention away from other significant causes of violence in our country such as: drugs, inadequate parenting, availability of weapons, unemployment, etc. It is hard to report on how violent television effects society, since television affects different people in different ways. There is a significant problem with violence on television that we as a society are going to have to acknowledge and face.
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 children. Children are exposed to 20,000 advertisements a year. The average child watches 8,000 televised murders and 100,000 acts of violence before finishing elementary school. By the time children graduate from high school, those numbers more than doubles. Furthermore, television is shown to influence attitudes about race and gender. Pro-social and anti-social behaviors are influenced by television.
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).
The American Psychological Association believe television violence affects young children negatively after doing many case studies. They believe children can learn aggressive attitudes and behaviors. Children can become desensitized to real world violent behavior. Young kids can develop a fear of being victimized by violence. The American Academy of Pediatrics and American Academy of Adolescent Psychiatry believe that television does influence the behavior of children from as young as one years old (Kalin.) These are all seemingly reliable resources to encourage that belief violent cartoons does affect young children.