Media Violence

5 Pages 1145 Words

Since television service was introduced, it has become so much a part of our existence that many people cannot imagine a life without it. Virtually every American household has a TV set. Media violence has a negative effect on children. They have no sense of conscience at a young age, but there is certain things parents can do to cut down the aggression among their children.
Children begin to notice and react to TV very early. By the age of three, children will willingly watch a show designed for them 95% of the time and will imitate someone on television as they will imitate a live person. The average time children spend watching television rises from about two and a half-hours per day at the age of five to about four hours a day at age twelve. During adolescence, average viewing time drops off to two to three hours a day. Young children do not process information in the same way as adults. Nor do they have the experience or judgment to evaluate what they see. For example, children between the ages of six and ten may believe that most of what they see on TV is true to life. Since they watch a lot of TV, this makes them particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of television. At young ages, children are basically amoral; that meaning up tot he age of two, children feel no obligation to follow the rules, the very idea is meaningless to them (Levine). Kohlberg's hierarchy of moral development illustrates these ideas. Kohlberg's hierarchy divides moral reasoning into 3 main stages and six sub-stages. The first stage is the Preconventional Morality stage. From about age two to age seven, dependency on authority is strong and the inner controls are weak. The second stage is conventional Morality. At about age seven, children are no longer completely dependent on their others to define what is right and what is wrong. At this age children begin to develop what is known as a conscience and most know the difference between what is the...