In a study by Centerfall (1992, p.3062), it was found that the annual Caucasian homicide rate doubled after the introduction of television. This study also concluded that an equal rate occurred in Canada and South Africa at that same period. In these instances the lag of the study and the doubling of the homicide rate was fifteen years. In turn, the children would have had to age those fifteen years, to be old enough to affect this rate. In comparing the US with South America, the Vietnam War could be a factor in those skyrocketing rates. As Centerfall stated that Canada, who were without war, was used is the control group to support the hypothesis. In this study it was concluded that the addition of television in the 1950’s caused the doubling of the homicide rate. The numbers also concluded that long-tern exposure to television was a casual factor in one half of these 10,000 homicides annually. It’s important to realize that television alone did not account for all of the homicides. Drugs, alcohol, and poverty were just a few of the depositing factors that also accounted for the violence.

Technological advances, including satellite and cable television, interactive computer games, and the Internet give children easier access to a wide range of violent images, with the lack of censorship. There needs to be consideration towards the best way to protect and educate children. So the question arises of whether the violence that children view directly affects their nature of perceiving violence? If so, there also needs to be further studies and actions to prevent this occurrence.

During the experiment, the children were divided into three different groups for studying purposes that included them receiving: prior mediation to viewing, no mediation to viewing, and the control group that did not view any television at all. In the prior mediation, the instructor told the students to try to think about the feelings of the victim, or the man in the cartoon. In the group that didn’t receive mediation they were simply told that they were to watch the 5-minute film.

A study was directly aimed at how children understood violence with a concentration on what they viewed on television. In this study, 351 second through sixth graders were the participants. They were divided into two separate groups based on age. One parent of each of the participants provided demographic information for the study. An issue that was mentioned was that the average income of the household was $40,000-$60,000.

Although there are many behavioral problems with children who watch excessive amounts of violence on TV, programs can also have a positive effect on children of all ages. For example, children who watched the television program called Sesame Street gained in cultural pride, self-confidence, and interpersonal cooperation. It was also stated that Caucasian children developed more positive view toward children of other races (Greenfield, 1984, p.43). This positive attitude in children towards each other, without the barriers of aggression or racism, was due to the fact that Sesame Street often portrays characters from various minority groups in a positive, non-stereotyped way (Greenfield, 1984, p.42), and violence is often absent in such children’s programs. It is clear that children often learn how to behave from what they see on television, and the impact of television violence may be evident immediately in the children’s behavior or it may surface later in life.

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