Television Violence

11 Pages 2793 Words

en. Children repeat what they see and
hear, as the saying goes monkey see monkey do.
According to Jeanne Beckman children’s television programs actually
contain five times more violence then the average prime time news hour.
Considering that it has also been said by Beckman that children watch an
average of twenty-eight hours of television a week. That is a lot of violence
children could be watching. The child could be affected in many ways, by
becoming aggressive, fearful or less sensitive to others.
Children are impacted everyday by violence on television. With regard
to the issue of the Mean World Syndrome, there have been numerous studies
conducted by a research group at the University of Pennsylvania, led by
George Gerbner (Television 2). For more than 25 years, this group has
studied the content of prime time and Saturday morning television. In the fall
of each year, they videotape all prime time and Saturday morning television
for one week and then provide a detailed analysis of the content of that
programming. With regard to violence, the findings indicate that, over the
years, there are about 5 violent acts committed during every hour of prime
time television and 20 to 25 violent acts committed every hour of Saturday
morning children's programming. Of course, the levels of violence have varied
somewhat over the 20 years of monitoring, particularly in the area of
children's television programming ( Television 2).
Aggression is very evident with children watching violent shows.
Children who view shows in which violence is very realistic frequently
repeated or unpunished are more likely to imitate what they see (TV 2). This
is visible in a study done at Penn State University. About one hundred
preschool children were observed before and after watching television. Some
of the children watched cartoons that had many violent acts; others watched
shows that didn’t have any violent acts. The resea...