Violence in the Media

It often seems like everywhere one looks, violence rears its ugly head. It is seen

in the muggings on the streets, physical assaults in back alleys, shootings at schools, and even at home. The last of these, surprisingly, is a major source of violence. In most living rooms there sits an outlet of the most violent behavior and it often goes unnoticed.

It is the television and the children who view it are often pulled into its realistic world

with sometimes devastating results. More parents are using television as a means of

entertaining their children when they are unable to, and the amount of television that

children are watching is a growing concern in our society. In 1950, only 10% of

American homes had a television and by 1960 the percentage had grown to 90%. Today,

99% of homes have a television. (Note 1) The results of many experiments and research

have all shown that television is a major source of violent behavior in children and that

the two do, in deed, go hand in hand.

As much as society would like to ignore the fact, violence in the media does affect

children. In New York, a 16-year-old boy broke into a cellar. When the police

apprehended him and asked him why he was wearing gloves, he replied that he had

learned to do so from television as to not leave fingerprints. In Alabama, a nine-year-old

boy received a bad report card from his teacher. He suggested sending the teacher

poisoned candy in retaliation as he had seen on television the night before. In California,

a seven-year-old boy sprinkled broken glass into the stew his family was to eat for dinner.

When asked why, he replied that he wanted to see if the results would be the same in real

life as they were on television. These are certainly sobering examples of how television

can affect a child.

The average child spends approximately 28 hours a week watching television;

twice as much time as is spent in school. By the age of 18, one child will have witnessed

over 200,000 acts of violence on television, to include 16,000 murders. (Note 2) One

might argue that these are impressionable children with no sense of right and wrong;

however, 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 confused, have a greater distrust towards others, a superficial approach to

adult problems, and even an unwillingness to become an adult. Media 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, a negative

influence that upsets moral balance and makes a child prone to aggressive behavior as it

warps his or her perception of the real world. Others 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. By having all the stories and facts plastered in front of them, they can easily lose

interest sitting in a classroom all day. Even during their favorite TV show, there is a brief

interruption in the story line when a commercial comes on. Their attention spans are

being molded by this continuous interruption, causing them to lose focus easily. Research

has shown that teachers today are using more multimedia devices to capture the students'

attention. Being so used to seeing information provided by the TV, they are more

responsive to learning with it in school and are more apt to retain the information.