Tv And Violence 2 Essay, Research Paper

More and more today we are seeing children going into their schools and committing violent crimes. What has the world come to these days? It often seems like a person cannot watch television without hearing about violence. Violence is everywhere it’s on television, in the movies, and in cartoons. It seems impossible to watch any kind of television without seeing some kind of violence. In many people’s living rooms there sits an outlet for violence that often goes unnoticed. It is the television, and the children who view it are often pulled into its realistic world of violence scenes with sometimes devastating results.

Much research has gone into showing why children are so mesmerized by this big glowing box and the action that takes place within it. All too often these days the television fills in as a babysitter. Without some supervision television can be a very dangerous thing. Someone has to explain to children that what happens on the television is not real and that the people are actors. Research shows that it is definitely a major source of violent behavior in children. The research proves time and time again that aggression and television viewing do go hand in hand. The truth about television violence and children has been shown. Some are trying to fight this problem. Others are ignoring it and hoping it will go away. Still others do not even seem to care. However, the facts are undeniable. The studies have been carried out and all the results point to one conclusion: Television violence causes children to be violent and the effects can be life-long. Violent television viewing does affect children. The effects have been seen in a number of cases. In New York, a 16-year-old boy broke into a cellar. When the police caught him and asked him why he was wearing gloves. The boy replied that he had learned that if he wore gloves he would not leave fingerprints and that he learned this from television. In Alabama, a nine-year-old boy received a bad report card from his teacher. He suggested sending the teacher poisoned candy as revenge as he had seen on television the night before. In California, a seven-year-old boy sprinkled ground-up glass into the lamb stew the family was to eat for dinner. When asked why he did it he replied “I wanted to see if the results would be the same in real life as they were on television” (American 21). These are certainly startling examples of how television can affect the child. It must be pointed out that children watching violent television directly caused all of these situations. Not only does television violence affect the child’s youth, but it can also affect his or her adulthood.

Some psychologists and psychiatrists feel that continued exposure to such violence might unnaturally speed up the impact of the adult world on the child. This can force the child into a kind of premature maturity. “As the child matures into an adult, he can become bewildered, have a greater distrust towards others, a superficial approach to adult problems, and even an unwillingness to become an adult” (Berry 14). Television violence can destroy a young child’s mind. The effects of this violence can be long lasting, if not never-ending. For some, television at its worst, is an assault on a Child’s mind an insidious influence that upsets moral balance and makes a child prone to aggressive behavior as it warps his or her perception of the real world. Other see television as an unhealthy intrusion into a child’s learning process, “substituting easy pictures for the discipline of reading and concentrating and transforming the young viewer into a hypnotized non-thinker” (Eisenstock 48). As you can see, television violence can disrupt a child’s learning and thinking ability which will cause life long problems. If a child cannot do well in school, his or her whole future is at stake. Why do children like the violence that they see on television? “Since media violence is much more vicious than that which children normally experience, real-life aggression appears bland by comparison” (American 27). The violence on television is able to be more exciting and enthralling than the violence that is normally viewed on the streets. Instead of just seeing a police officer handing a ticket to a speeding violator, he can beat the offender bloody on television. However, children do not always realize this is not the way thing are handled in real life. They come to expect it, and when they do not see it the world becomes bland and in need of violence. The children then can create the violence that their mind craves. The television violence can cause actual violence in a number of ways. As explained above, after viewing television violence the world becomes bland in comparison. “The child needs to create violence to keep himself satisfied” (Berry 12). Also the children find the violent characters on television fun to imitate. Children do imitate the behavior of models such as those portrayed in television, movies, etc. They do so because the ideas that are shown to them on television are more attractive to the viewer than those the viewer can think up himself. This has been widely seen lately with the advent of the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers. Young children cannot seem to get enough of these fictional characters and will portray them often. Another reason why television violence causes violence in children is apparent in the big cities. Aggressive behavior was more Acceptable in the city, where a child’s popularity rating with classmates was not hampered by his or her aggression. In the bigger cities, crime and violence is inevitable, expected and, therefore, is left unchecked and out of line. Much research into the topic of children and television violence has been conducted. All of the results seem to point in the same direction. The United States government conducted an experiment where children were left alone in a room with a monitor playing videotape of other children at play. Soon, things got out of and progressive mayhem began to take place. Children who had just seen commercial violence accepted much higher levels of aggression than other children did. The results were published in a report. A Surgeon General’s report found some preliminary indications of a casual Relationship between television viewing and aggressive behavior in children. In other research among U.S. children it was discovered that aggression, academic problems, unpopularity with peers and violence feed off each other. This promotes violent behavior in the children. The child watches violence, which causes aggression. The combination of aggression and continued television viewing lead to poor academic standings as well as unpopularity. These can cause more aggression and a vicious cycle begins to spin.

There are many different hypothesis of why children are so violent today. Some critics say that television is not causing the violence in today’s society the break down of the family is the problem. Others say that the parents are the problem. They say that the parents do not teach their children any morals and therefore they do not value life. Some claim that children are becoming so violent today because the morals of society have changed. Most of these explanations are just attempts for people to lay the blame some place else.

The break down of the family unit is not the problem itself. It’s a contributing factor that makes the problem worse because the children are spending more time in front of the television. Perhaps the most important way to prevent children from watching television violence is to stop it where it starts. The parents should step in and turn the set off when a violent program comes on. The parents are the child’s role models from which he learns. Fixing the problems of children and television violence isn’t easy. There are many factors that have to be considered and people to be convinced. However, there are measures that can be taken to prevent the children from ever being exposed to such things. Does the world want to have to go through another incident like the one in Colorado’s Columbine high school?