Children see violent acts on television and make an attempt to process it, and in doing so, their innocence is lost. According to Dr. David Elkind, president emeritus, National Association for the Education of Young Children, “Television forces children to accommodate a great deal and inhibits the assimilation of material. Consequently, the television child knows a great deal more than he or she can ever understand. This discrepancy between how much information children have and what they can process is the major stress of television.” (1

60) Children’s minds are not fully developed; therefore, they can not be expected to understand the violence on television.

Parents must watch at least one episode of every show their children watch. An educated decision can then be made on the appropriateness for the respective age groups. Any television program with too much violence or negative behavior should be banned from small children. Children can also be restricted to educational or completely nonviolent programming. Lock-Out! is a specially designed combination lock that can be inserted in the prongs of the television plug, preventing children from sneaking in television time without permission. Using this product gives parents more control over what children watch when there is no one around to supervise them. (Lock-Out website)

One of the most disconcerting facts of modern life is the abundance of wasted time spent watching mindless television programs. “...at the end of the usual life span, the average person will have endured more than ten uninterrupted years of television, day and night, with no breaks for the potty, no sleep, no work, no school. Ten years of staring at a cathode-ray tube, looking at images that for the most part one doesn’t control and never chose.” (Medved, et. al. 19)

This V-Chip and ratings technology is an important step in preventing unwanted viewing of violence. It is especially helpful when children are left to choose a show to watch. By setting the allowable programming to only TV-Y, it is less likely that children will witness any violent acts on television. Because the ratings are determined by show producers and the network, it is important for parents to remain in an active role in participating in program viewing with children. There are times when violent acts are missed in rating judgments. If a show is rated TV-Y7, a parent needs to judge the program and make a decision to accept the rating as accurate or disregard it as incorrect.

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