Television and Media Violence - Effects of TV Violence on Children

In the United States children watch an average of three to fours hours of television daily (Cantor & Wilson, 1984, p. 28). Television can be a powerful influence in developing value systems and shaping behavior. Unfortunately, much of today's television programming is violent. 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; and they identify with certain characters, good or bad. Therefore, extensive viewing of television violence by children causes greater

Over the past two decades, hundreds of studies have examined how violent programming on TV affects children and young people. While a direct "cause and effect" link is difficult to establish, there is a growing consensus that some children may be vulnerable to violent images and messages.

According to Huesmann Rowell L., "One of the notable changes in our social environment in the 20th and 21st centuries has been the saturation of our culture and daily lives by the mass media. In this new environment radio, television, movies, videos, video games, cell phones, and computer networks have assumed central roles in our children’s daily lives. For better or worse the mass media are having an enormous impact on our children’s values, beliefs, and behaviors. Unfortunately, the consequences of one particular common element of the electronic mass media has a particularly detrimental effect on children’s well being. Research evidence has accumulated over the past half-century that exposure to violence on television, movies, and most recently in video games increases the risk of violent behavior on the viewer’s part just as growing up in an environment filled with real violence increases the risk of

Children watch an average of 2 to 4 hours of television a day (these numbers may have increased since this study), the occurrence of violence on television has increase by 75% since 1998, children view more than 1,000 murders, rapes, and assaults each year on television, by the time children reach elementary school children will have already seen 100,000 acts of violence committed on television (United States Congress and Senate 2012). Exposure to these acts of violence makes it very easy to slowly accept that this is the way the world operates. Children becoming desensitized to violence has a negative effect on their evaluative/ judgment system and they begin to lack empathy. When children become desensitized to the violence in television they begin to lose a sense of remorse for poor behavior and not take societal crime as serious as it should be

Think about how often children watch television. Over the past years the amount of time children spend watching television has dramatically gone up. With this increase there is also an increase in the amount of violence that is on the television. Many individuals ask themselves why the violence among children and youth has gone up. The fact that violence is everywhere a child looks could be one of the main answers for this devastating question.

Media violence is one of the most debated public issues society faces today. Television screens are loaded with the glamorization of weapon carrying. Violence constitute as amusing and trivialized. Needless portrayals of interpersonal violence spread across the television screens like wild fire. Televisions spew the disturbing events such as children being assaulted, husbands inflicting domestic abuse on their wives and children succumbing to abuse by their parents. Scenes of betrayal, anguish, infiltrate the television screen. Unfortunately, a child becomes subjected to media violence. Everything a child sees or hears in the media affects them in some way or another. The precise effects of media violence on children are

Children are growing aggressively from watching media input into their undeveloped mind that violence is always the quickest answer and it is easy to do so while if you were to be a good guy, you will have to suffer and lose. Dr. Kunkle, Professor of Communication at University of Arizona wrote in an article on The Effects of Television Violence on Children wrote, “violence that is presented as sanitized or glamorizes poses a much greater risk of adverse effects on children than violence that is presented with negative outcomes such as pain or suffering for its victim or negative consequence for its perpetrators”. Dr. Kunkle came to this conclusion based on National Television Violence Study as a participated researcher in this study for over 20 years. Even with such evidences, teenagers do not care of this fact as it not relevant toward them since they know what is right or wrong. However, if they know the intermediate line between right and wrong, why are they continuing to watches all these violent shows on television and social media and act the same ways like those on social

From a very early age, people are exposed to various types of media, for example books or magazines, television, song lyrics, video games, and movies. Media often portrays, aggressive action, behaviour, and violence. This content can negatively affect not only adolescents and adults, but can have an even greater effect on children even from the moment they are exposed to it. Children who are exposed to violence in the media may display aggressive and violent behaviour. Young people especially children under the age of eight this may not be able to distinguish between fantasy and reality and may be more likely to be influenced by violence in the media (American Academy of Pediatrics 1497). Young people should have limited access to the different types of media that exposes them to violence because of the negative effects such as, modelling violent behaviour, becoming desensitized to violence, accepting violent behaviour, and getting a false impression of the prevalence of violence.

          Due to violence on television, children become less sensitive to that pain and suffering of others or to become more aggressive to others. It also makes children more fearful to the world around them. (Abelard 1) Viewing habits of children observed for many decades deduced that violence on TV is associated with aggressive behavior, more than poverty, race, or parental behavior. It also reported that a TV show contains about 20 acts of violence an hour.

Children view violence in different ways when they watch it on television, whether it is cartoons or a type of drama and action programming. After children have watched these television shows, they may have interpreted the meaning into a negative behavior. It could influence them by becoming aggressive, afraid of the world that surrounds them, or it may lead to confusion. When it is said that children may become confused because their parents teach that violence is wrong. When they view someone in a “superhero” position participating in violence, they may see that as it is all right for the simple fact the good person does the action. According to the American Academy of Children and Adolescent Psychiatry, “the impact of TV violence may be immediately evident in the child's behavior or may surface years later (AACAP, 2011).”

The AACAP(Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry) states that if children are watching a great amount of violence on TV then they are more likely to not connect pain and negativity with violence. “Television violence affects children through a

According to E.F Dubow and L.S Miller, authors of Television Violence and Aggressive Behavior: Social Science Perspectives on Television, “Ignoring consequences of violence (including the pain of victims, the victims’ families, and the families of perpetrators) or depicting the consequences unreasonably sets in motion a destructive encoding process.” There could be found a direct correlation between aggressive behavior and violence witnessed on television. The more violence watched, the more desensitized a viewer would become. Dubow and Miller further state “viewers become [fearful] and begin to identify with the aggressors and the aggressors’ solutions to various problems.” It is this identification that causes violent behaviors to become encoded in the person’s mind when exposed to repeated violent acts. The person may then come to see the world as a bleak and sinister place. Along with this

Aside from video games, there is a multitude of media that today’s youth is exposed to every day. Such media includes social media websites such as Twitter and Instagram, movies, television, and news broadcasting programs. Television, however, plays arguably the largest role in influencing adolescents in today’s society. According to Marina Krcmar and Kathryn Green, “Viewing of violent television and interest in television violence has been linked to a host of antisocial behaviors such as increased aggression, decreased sensitivity to violence and the suffering experienced by the victims of violence, and an increased sense of fear and helplessness” (Krcmar 195). This means that after long-term exposure to violence on television, people essentially become desensitized to violent and gruesome acts. This can lead to a decreased feeling of empathy for a real-life victim and an increased feeling of helplessness in a real-life situation of violence. If one is desensitized to violence, the odds immediately become more likely that one will not see any consequences for committing violent actions in the real world. Aside from committing violent acts, this form of media exposure can also encourage “risk-taking behaviors.” “Risk-taking is the tendency to engage in behaviors that threaten or harm and individual’s physical or mental health… [and] poses an actual threat to the individual engaging in the activity” (Krcmar 196). Krcmar is saying that not only does the risky behavior

As evidence has shown, children view many violent scenes while watching television, movies, or playing video games, but the question still remains: What psychological effect does violence in the media have on children? Research over the past 10 years has consistently shown that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between media violence and real-life aggression (Strasburger 129). Violence in the media can lead to aggressive behavior by children and teenagers who watch the various programs. Of course, not all children who watch television, or movies, or play video games develop aggressive behavior. However, there is a strong correlation between media violence and aggressive behavior. A study, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry, examined how children's television viewing practices are related to aggressive behaviors. The results revealed that children who reported watching greater amounts of television per day had higher levels of violent behavior than children who reported lesser amounts of television viewing (Singer 1041). Witnessing violence is an important determining factor in violent behavior. The media serves as a means for children to witness violence. According to Bandura's Social Learning Theory, children imitate behavior that they see on television, especially if the person performing the behavior is attractive or if the

Children would be imitating violence by watching television programs, it is called “SpongeBob effect”. University of Virginia psychologists found that fast-paced, fantastical television shows may impart a negative effect immediately after watching the show on the learning and behavior of young children. (University of Virginia institutional review board)