American children watch an average of three to four hours of television daily. Whether it is a music video, cartoon or a televised sport, a large amount of the programming is violent in a way. Statistics show that children and adolescents in America spend, on average, 28 hours per week watching television. Unfortunately, much of televisions programming is violent. What's even more staggering is that it has been estimated by the American Academy of Pediatrics that by age 18, the average young person will have viewed an estimated 200,000 acts of violence on television alone. In fact, according to John P. Murray, Ph.D., Professor of Developmental Psychology and the former Associate Vice Provost for Research and Director of the School of Family Studies and Human Services at Kansas State University, about five violent

· Children may be more fearful of the world around them.

Another study done by Atkin, Greenberg, Korzenny, and McDermott (1979) used a different measure of aggressive behavior. They gave nine to thirteen-year-old boys and girls circumstances. For example: Suppose that you are riding your bicycle down the street and some other child comes up and pushes you off your bicycle. What would you do? The reaction alternatives included physical or verbal aggression along with options to reduce or avoid conflict. These researchers found that physical or verbal aggressive responses were selected by 45 per cent of heavy-television-violence viewers compared to only 21 per cent of the light-violence viewers. In an additional study, Sheehan (1983) observed two groups of Australian children, first and third-graders, for a three-year period. He found that for the older group, now third through fifth grade, both the overall amount of violence viewing and the intensity of viewing were significantly related to the child's level of aggressive behavior as rated by their classmates. Finally, in a study focused on adults, Phillips (1983) investigated the effects of the portrayal of suicides in television soap operas on the suicide rate in the United States using death records compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics. He found, over a six-year period, that whenever a major soap opera personality committed suicide on television, within three days there was a significant increase in the number of female suicides across the nation.

Many people ask why is there so much violence on television. Well violence is used in many ways in promos as a hook to draw viewers into the program. Viewers see violence in the promos encouraging them to watch both the entire announcement and the program it advertises. When they tune in, viewers then see violence in the preview at the beginning of the show. During the show, commercials and promos often interrupt violent scenes or occur just as violence is about to erupt to ensure that viewers will continue watching. All these endorsement efforts reveal that networks think rather than push away viewers, violence attracts them to the program.

· Children may be more likely to behave in aggressive ways toward others

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