According to the Institute for the Social Research, an aggressive behavior is learned behavior which is being taught to our children by the media violence that they are exposed to daily (Chen, 1994 p.23). In Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis, written by Albert Bandura in 1973, indicates that sometimes watching a single violent program can increase aggressiveness. However, the impact of viewing violence on television may become immediately evident in the child’s behavior, or it may not surface till later (Canto

What causes a person to continue aggressive behavior even after their perception of what is real or unreal is learned? Are children naturally bad or, are they products of their environment? Why does aggressive behavior become exacerbated, and lives become violent, even after a child grows up? Some answers may be found in Albert Bandura’s book The Social Learning Theory. Bandura believes that

Adolescent children (ages 12-17) “become capable of abstract thought and reasoning, although they rarely use these abilities when watching television” (Dietz & Strasburger 1991). At these age levels they tend to watch less television than when they were younger. Adolescents in middle school and high school are more likely to doubt the reality of television. The small percentage of those who continue to believe in the reality of television, and who identify with its’ violent heroes are the ones likely to be more aggressive (Bandura, 1973). The bottom line is “children learn their attitude about violence at a very young age, and once learned, the attitudes tend to be life-long” (Strasburger and Donnerstein, 1999). Studies of the effects of TV violence on children and teenagers have found that children may become insensitive to violence. Consequently, they tend to gradually accept violence as a way to solve problems by imitating the violence they observe on television by identifying with characters, good or bad. Children who watch television shows in which violence is very realistic, and that is frequently repeated or unpunished, are more likely to imitate what they see which is confirmed by statistics, and case studies (Bandura, p.25).

Children “are predisposed to seek out and pay attention to violence” (Canton and Wilson, 1984). It is not the violence itself that makes programs attractive to children, but the vivid images accompanying them. Children are unlikely to put the violence in context since they are likely to misunderstand the violent images being portrayed – children cannot comprehend fiction from reality. They don’t realize TV programs are

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