FREE ESSAY ON VIOLENCE ON TV

VIOLENCE ON TV

VIOLENCE ON TV
What has the world come to these days? It often seems like everywhere one looks, violence
rears its ugly head. We see it in the streets, back alleys, school, and even at home. The
last of these is a major source of violence. In many peoples' 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. 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 don't 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.
The information can't be ignored. 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 he replied
that he had learned to do so to not leave fingerprints and that he discovered this on
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 that he
wanted to see if the results would be the same in real life as they were on television
(Howe 72). These are certainly startling examples of how television can affect the child.
It must be pointed out that all of these situations were directly caused by children
watching violent television.
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 (Carter 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 tat 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 nonthinker (Langone 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 (Dorr 127). 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 don't always realize this is
not the way thing are handled in real life. They come to expect it, and when they don't
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 theworld becomes bland in comparison. The child
needs to create violence to keep himself satisfied (Dorr 127). 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 (Brown 98). This has been widely seen lately with the advent
of the Mighty Morphin' 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 (Huesmann 166). 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. There are undeniable correlations
between violent television and aggression. This result was obtained in a survey of London
school children in 1975. Greensberg found a significant relationship between violence
viewing and aggression (Dorr 160),
In Israel 74 children from farms were tested as well as 112 schoolchildren from the city
of Tel Aviv. The researchers found that the city children watched far more television
than their farmland counterparts. However, both groups of children were just as likely to
choose a violent program to watch when watching television. The city children had a
greater tendency to regard violent television programs as accurate reflections of real
life than the farm children. Likewise, the city boys identified most with characters from
violent programs than did those living on the farms (Huesmann 166).
The government also did research in this area. They conducted an experiment where
children were left alone in a room with a monitor playing a videotape of other children
at play. Soon, things got out of hand and progressive mayhem began to take place.
Children who had just seen commercial violence accepted much higher levels of aggression
than other children. The results were published in a report. A Sergon General's report
found some preliminary indications of a casual relationship between television viewing
and aggressive behavior in children' (Langone 50).
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 (Huesmann 166). 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.
In yet another piece if research children who watch a lot of violent television were
compared to children who don't. The results were that the children who watched more
violent television were more likely to agree that it's okay to hit someone if you're mad
at them for a good reason. The other group learned that problems can be solved passively,
through discussion and authority (Cheyney 46).
The most important aspect of violence in television is preventing it. There are many ways
in which it can be prevented, but not often are many carried out. These solutions are
easy to implement, but are often overlooked because of commercial purposes.
One such solution is to create conflict without killing. Michael Landon, who starred in
and directed Little House on the Prairie managed to do so in his programs. His goal was
to put moral lessons in his show in an attempt to teach while entertaining. On the
program Hill Street Blues the conflicts are usually personal and political matters among
the characters. Although some violence does occur, the theme is not the action, but
rather its consequences (Cheyney 49).
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.
If he can learn at an early age that violence on television is bad, then he can turn the
set off for himself when he is older. Education should start at home.
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. This problem will, no
doubt, never go away and continue to get worse as the years go by. However, there are
measures that can be taken to prevent the children from ever being exposed to such
things. After all, what's the world going to be like when the people who are now children
are running the world?
Bibliography
Works Cited
Langone, John. Violence. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1984.
Cheyney, Glenn Alan. Television in American Society. New York: Franklin Watts Co., 1983.
Howe, Michael J. A. Television and Children. London: New University Education, 1977.
Husemann, L. Rowell. Social Channels Tune T.V.'s effects. Science News 14 Sept. 1985:
166.
Door, Palmer. Children and the Faces of Television. New York: Academic Press, 1980.
Carter, Douglass. T.V. Violence and the Child. New York: Russel Sage Foundation, 1977.