The TV Made Me Do It Essay

Television is the mainstream of our culture. Violence on television has been a topic of conflict since before 1950. There have been repeated debates on how to protect children from the harmful effects of violence on television. Television is one form of modern media that influences the everyday lives of people. Televised violence has a major effect on how children perceive the world and how they behave. "American television has become the most violent in the world. It is for this reason why researchers have focused their attention toward television violence" (Cantor & Hoffner 424-4-25). Children enjoy watching television and now with the increased technology of cable and movie

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

Many people still have several questions they want answered, such as, is media violence actually affecting children or are children already prone to violence drawn to media violence? Some experts have shown short and long-term negative effects occur in children from watching violent media; however another group of experts have shown that media violence is only one of many risk factors leading to aggression developed in children. These two groups need to continue more research and go beyond that to find true solutions. Nevertheless, no sources were found to say that media violence has no influence on the increase in modern culture’s violent actions. The key to discovering the true correlation between violence in children and media violence is to continue research until a solution is

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

Today the media is more influential than ever. Movies, books, podcasts, tv shows, and other various media outlets have influenced the nation tremendously. Violence has also been a hot topic these past few years. Gun shootings, homicides, and overall crimes are consistently being committed and shared on the news. The topic of violence and the discussion of media influencing that violence is extremely intriguing. In 2008, John Murray, a psychologist, wrote in his published book, “Fifty years of research on the effect of TV violence on children leads to the inescapable conclusion that viewing media violence is related to increases in aggressive attitudes, values, and behaviors” (Murray, 2008, p. 1212). This research shows that there is a correlation

Neilson Company reported that by the time a child finishes elementary school they will have already witnessed 8,000 murders. In the USA an average of 20-25 violent acts are shown in children’s television programs each hour. A significant association was found between the amount of time spent watching television during adolescence, with its exposure to violence, and the likelihood of subsequent antisocial behavior, such as threatening aggression, assault or physical fights resulting in injury, and robbery. Young children are more easily impressionable. have a harder time distinguishing between fantasy and reality. cannot easily discern motives for violence learn by observing and imitating.

"Over the last three decades, the one overriding finding in research on the mass media is that exposure to media portrayals of violence increases aggressive behavior in children (media_violence.html)". This fact is clear evidence that overexposure to television will have long-term negative effects on childrenís behavior, and in turn, their entire lives. Aggression, quite obviously, can lead to dangerous situations. A child who is overly aggressive will get himself into fights where someone is likely to get hurt. Sure, children are often irrational and engage in fights over trivial matters, but how would you feel knowing that your own kid is hurting other children and himself because he or she watched someone on TV do it?

          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).”

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

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