TV Violence Effects Children
Most people look at television as an entertaining and educational way to spend time, some people think there is a lot of violence in television and that is influencing our young into becoming aggressive in nature and to tolerate violence. Now scientists have discovered that all the violence in television can in fact mold a young innocent person into becoming a monster right under our eyes, just by watching television. It might sound absurd, but think about it. It’s 5:00 p.m. you feel in the mood to relax and watch a talk show after a stressful day at work to find out the topic is “He killed my sister!!” Sounds odd but most people like the thrill of violence. People like scary, violent movies like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm St. Children see the bad guy is shot dead by the good guy and everyone applauds. He or She learns that its fine to hurt someone as long as they are bad, so if cousin Joey takes my toy its O.K. to hit him because he is bad. This type of behavior can produce a false idea in children’s mind of how the real world deals with criminals. All major networks ABC, NBC, CBS etc. contribute to this sad but true fact. If you seriously think about it, it’s not all that uncommon to turn on the news or pick
In conclusion, studies have been made, the results are calculated, and many new studies complement the finding of the old studies. There should be no doubt in anybody’s mind that television violence changes children behavior and in terms causes other long lasting effects as adults. In my opinion television violence not only changes children behavior, but also changes society in general because children eventually become the adults of today. Several decades ago, a few psychologist hypothesized that viewing violence in the unreal television world would have a purgative effect and therefore reduce the changes of violent behavior in the real world. But other psychologists began to doubt this notion when their research with children revealed that children perceive much action on the TV screen as real. L. Rowell Huesmann and Leonard Eron (1986), who studied the effects of media violence on 875 youngsters in grades 1 through 3, found that children’s behavior was influenced by television, especially if the youngsters were heavy viewers of violent programming. Television violence, according to the researchers, provided a script for the children to act out aggressive behavior in relationships with others. These children were also likely to perform poorly in school and often unpopular with their peers. Even though aggression was found in children who watched television, realistically it is not the only factor related to children violent behavior, but the studies have found that it is a major factor because it affects us so young. Huesmann and Eron state that television is not the only variable involved, but their many years of research have left them without any doubt that heavy exposure to media violence is a highly influential factor in children and later in their adult lives. In 1971, they found about 500 of the original 875 surveyed children. They were now 19 years and the results were just as powerful. The relationship between violence viewing at age 8 and how aggressive the individual was at 19 was higher than the relationship between watching violence at age 8 and also behaving destructive. Huesmann tested the children in 1981. The subject is now 30 year olds and many still show an aggressive nature. The research also showed that the 30 year olds who were more violent at 8 had more arrest for drunk driving, committed more violent crimes, and were more abusive to their spouses. Also, the 8 year olds who watched more violent television had been arrested more often than the other and self confesses that they had more fights while consuming alcohol. The most frightening results that they found was that their children also showed the same if not more sign of aggression as their parents. After these findings some of the television networks must have started feeling the pressure and conducted studies of their own. Whether it was to try to disclaim the findings of others or to see for themselves the effects of violence is unknown, but what is known is that they found more evidence that television does affect our children. Centerwall (1989, 19930) analyzed crime data in areas of the world with and without television and made comparisons in areas before and after the introduction of TV. His studies determined that homicide rates doubled in ten to fifteen years after TV was introduced for the first time into specified areas of the United States and Canada. Observing that violent television programming exerts its exhilarating effects primarily on children. Centerwall noted that the ten to fifteen year lag time could be expected before homicide rates increase. Acknowledging that other factors besides TV do have an influence on the quantity of violent crimes. Centerwall’s careful statistical analysis indicated that when the negative effects of TV were removed, quantitative evidence showed there would be 10,000 fewer homicides, 70,000 fewer rapes and 700,000 fewer injurious assaults. All these figures add up to alarming results, but
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Approximate Word count = 2839
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)
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