TV Violence

4 Pages 880 Words

The are many impacts on children that influence them when they are young all the way until they reach there teen stage. The topic I want to talk about is the impact of television violence. I have a little four-year-old sister so this topic really captured attention to me. There really wont be an exact answer but I want to discuss many studies and cause and effect behavior situations that I researched about this topic, that leads me to believe that television does promote violence.



First, the extent of viewing has a lot to do with the violence. Children begin watching television at a very early age, sometimes as early as six months, and are ardent viewers by the time that they are two or three years old. The general pattern of viewing is one of a steady rise in the number of hours viewed from early childhood through preadolescence and then a sharp drop in viewing during the adolescent years. According to audience rating surveys (Nielsen, 1988), the typical American household has the television set on for more than seven hours each day and children age 2 to 11 spend an average of 28 hours per week viewing (Andreasen, 1990; Condry, 1989; Liebert & Sprafkin, 1988). Naturally, the content viewed is more important than the amount of viewing and televised violence is one of the chief concerns.


In addition to broadcast television, cable TV adds to the level of violence through new, more violent, programs, and by recycling older violent broadcasts. A recent survey by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (Lichter & Amundson, 1992) identified 1,846 violent scenes broadcast and cablecast between 6 a.m. to midnight on one day in Washington, D.C. The most violent periods were between 6 to 9 a.m. with 497 violent scenes (165.7 per hour) and between 2 to 5 p.m. with 609 violent scenes (203 per hour). Most of this violence is presented without context or judgment as to its acceptability. And most of this violence in the early morning a...