“With a television in ninety-six percent of Americans’ homes, TV obviously has a major effect on the attitudes, education and behavior of our children.” (Dudly PG 71) The lesson being sent out through the airwaves is violence. And the students to this lesson are children. The portal to this harmful material is Television. “The context in which most violence is presented on television poses risks for younger viewers” (UCLA monitoring report) Violence on TV is at epidemically high levels for example eighty-five percent of cable programming is violent. (UCLA monitoring report) This on-slot of television violence is affecting children in many harmful ways. As a result of observing this high amount of TV violence, children are now becoming desensitized to violence in real life situations. Therefore children are not able to decide what is appropriate behavior and what is inappropriate behavior. “The media influence undermines children’s abilities to select priorities and choose alternatives to violence”. (Arnold, pg 21) Children are also known to reenact what they see on television. Example: kids see their favorite super hero do something on television so they want to

“Children mimic what they see in the media that is presented to them.” (Demers, PG 22) There are many documented cases where children were so amazed by what they witnessed on television that they felt they should reenact it. An example of this is “ Children in 1995 sprayed a flammable substance in the slot of a subway booth, then lit it. The booth exploded killing the attendant. This scene took place in the movie Money Train.” (Dudley PG 45) Another example of children feeling that they can be like the people they see on television occurred when teenagers re-enacted a scene from the popular MTV cartoon “Beavis and Butt-head”. On the show Beavis and his friend Butt-head where trying to figure out something to do because ironically their television was not working; they found some firecrackers and decided to blow something up. They brought the firecrackers to their neighbor’s mailbox. After they carefully placed them inside, with a spark of a match, they lit the fuse. After the fuse was burning, they ran away as fast as they could. They watched the mailbox explode laughing the whole time. This scene was repeated by teenagers who admitted during questioning they had the idea after watching the “Beavis and Butt-head” show.(msnbc.com) Not only do children mimic scenes from TV shows or movies shown on TV, but they also learn how to operate the tools of violence. One example of this is, “a nine year old who shoot up a building in New York City explained to police how he learned to load his automatic weapon. `I watch a lot of TV’, he said.” (Dudley PG 13)

The violence presented on television is showing the children who watch it that it is not only ok, but that it may also be necessary to solve most problems with a show of force. It shows them that someone getting shot in the head is not obscene, that it is no big deal. Television violence in the mind of a child is something that is cool, that children may be apt to mimic. The government must take measures to control the amount of violence being presented to our children either by censorship or removing it from television all together. Parents should be concerned

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