The Effect of TV Violence on Children - Term Paper Example

?The Effect of TV Violence on Children The 21st century has seen a rise in violent media programming on television. Crime procedural shows such as the CSI series, Castle, Law and Order, NCIS all share a common denominator. They all portray violence and murder as an everyday part of life. TV shows such as Jersey Shore, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Survivor, Amazing Race, and other reality based programming continuously promote aggressive behavior such as bullying, physical violence, collaborating with one another to undermine someone who is not a common enemy but is perceived to be in the common interest of a perceived goal, these all contribute to the ever evolving and growing trend of television violence. Keep in mind that all of these programs are shown during the prime time block of 6 PM to 10:30 PM, a time when children are still awake and most likely to be watching television with their parents. Although the parents are there to talk their children through the scenes being flashed on television, the reality is that nobody, not even the child psychologists can accurately predict how a child's mind is truly viewing and understanding the images that he sees. It is because of this lack of understanding that parents and child experts are growing increasingly concerned by the shows being cleared for prime time viewing. That is because the parents and experts see the way that the shows change the behavior of the children with each passing day. Experts at the Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry have noted that (“Children and TV Violence”) violent TV programs increase the aggressiveness in children who normally exhibit pacifist behaviors. A child does not have the mental capacity to differentiate between real life and the realistic portrayals of violence on TV. Most specially when those images are repeated on a daily or weekly basis. This is a case of “monkey see, monkey do” wherein children act out the actions that they see on television in a form of innocent game play which sometimes escalates into a problem of bullying and the like as the child grows older and comes to realize the power that game play violence has over his peers. Although in some cases, the results of the exposure to violent programming cannot be seen until the latter years of the child, most likely exhibiting its effects on his behavior upon reaching his or her teenage years which is the time when peer pressure and changes in life due to the separation of the child from the adult begin to take place. It is important to note that most experts agree that the changes in behavior of the child can occur even if that child is placed in a household that has both parents present and without a history of violence. In 1994, the American Psychological Association declared that in 1982 the National Institute of Mental Health released the following findings pertaining to the effects of violent media on children ( “Violence in the Media - Psychologists Help Protect Children from Harmful Effects”): Children may become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others Children may be more fearful of the world around them Children may be more likely to behave in aggressive or harmful ways towards others. All of these findings have increased a hundred fold in our current era. This is an assumption quickly proven by the growing number of school related violence being reported in the nightly and cable news. The violent acts of shooting classmates and teachers is not the result of mere bullying, these children were affected in some way by the television shows they were watching in the past. Their actions, are a direct result of that influence. These are not mere assumptions being made on my part. Rather, it is supported by research from noted psychologists L. Rowell Huesmann and Leonard Eron among others, who came to the conclusion, after much research and observation that: ... children who watched many hours of violence on television when they were in elementary school tended to also show a higher level of aggressive behavior when they became teenagers. (qtd. in “Violence in the Media - Psychologists Help Protect Children from Harmful Effects”) In their observation scenarios, the two psychologists noted that the impact of violent TV seemed to begin leaving its mark on the psyche of a child beginning at the tender age of 8. The beginning of a child's impressionable years. As they continued to observe the children into adolescence, the subjects became more prone to acting out criminal offenses and being arrested. The two professionals did make a startling discovery during this time though, it seemed that aggressive children did not always turn out to be violent adults or teenagers. Rather, it was those who had a significant amount of exposure time to TV violence that displayed the violent behavior in his adult life. Therefore, they came to the conclusion that the violent TV shows being watched were a catalyst, a cause if you will, rather than the consequence of aggressive behavior. The reality is that parents have always relied on television programs to serve as surrogate baby sitters. It is not uncommon in our modern times to find a toddler already plopped in front of the television box, watching Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel while his or her mother goes about her daily chores. Done on a daily basis, a child manages to rack up a mind boggling 28 hours or television time a week. This means that a child will most likely have had at least half of those hours fall under unsupervised TV viewing time. A situation that allows an unsupervised child to see: ... as many as 8,000 murders by the time he or she finishes elementary school at age 11, and worse, the killers are depicted as getting away with the murders 75% of the time while showing no remorse or accountability. (qtd. in “Violence in the Media - Psychologists Help Protect Children from Harmful Effects”) Needless to say, such exposure will have a definite influence on the mental development of a child. Increasing his tendency towards one of two things. Either he develops an immunity to brutality and aggression or, he retreats into himself and develops a fear of the outside world due to the perceived dangers lurking beyond his front door. Neither of which are exemplary scenarios for a child's upbringing. Aside from the known effects of violent television programs on the character traits of children, there have also been growing concerns regarding the emotional effect such exposure has on the children who develop a fear of the outside world due to the harsh portrayal being shown on television. As of 2005, the National Institute on Media and the Family has observed that there were at least 20-25 violent acts shown during what is considered to be an hour of children's television programming. That translates into roughly 200,000 violent acts that the child will witness all before he turns 18 (Hewitt, Doug “Negative Effects of TV Violence”). In an article by Doug Hewitt (“Negative Effects of TV Violence”), studies by the Education Resources Information Center or ERIC leaned towards the theory that TV violence can actually cause increased aggressiveness in the children over time because television programs make such negative behavior appear to be alright and acceptable to a certain degree. In fact, television programs with violent story lines could be perceived to be promoters of violent behavior as they portray realistic and graphic violent acts in a sometimes humorous fashion. Disclaimers of “Done by Professionals” fall on deaf ears as children are incapable of understanding what a professional is and why he should not do it if an adult is obviously having so much fun doing the same aggressive and violent act. Hewitt further noted that ERIC believes that violent television has the capability of altering the mindset and attitude of a child in order to make those emotionally fragile ones pessimistic and fearful of the world and those around them. These impressionable children find it harder to venture out of their front door because of their overly stimulated imaginations running in overdrive from violent television viewing. Their impression of the world beyond the protective zone of their home is usually bleak and terrible. Thus the child begins to develop pessimistic and fearful attitudes that do not exist in the attitude and mindset of those children who are more prone to violent suggestions via violent programming. In other words, the child develops undue anxiety and stress which leads to an inexplicable fear of the world thus making him a target of violence when he is outdoors (Frazier, Barbara “The Impact of TV Violence on Children and Adolescents”). By exposing the child to violent media many times over, a parent or baby sitter tends to unintentionally desensitize a child towards violence. Therefore, violence no longer provokes an emotional response from the child. When such a situation occurs, one cannot help but feel sad for the child who has now become officially desensitized of the world around him due to his increased tolerance of violence. Therefore a parent must take note, that even a simple cartoon like The Simpsons and The Jetsons can actually contain violent media that could be detrimental to a child's development because in a child's mind, these cartoons are a different portrayal of real life. In order to further understand why violent media has such an impact on the development of a child, one must also understand how a child views these violent TV programs. Gone are the days of the old Westerns where the baddies would instigate the violence on television and the good guys would come and take the bad guys to jail. These days, children are taught that on television shows, crime can actually pay off because (Frazier, Barbara “The Impact of TV Violence on Children and Adolescents”): ... violent acts go unpunished 73% of the time. The "good guy" is often the perpetrator of violence, which sends the message that violence is justified and a viable method for dealing with problems. As adults we know that this is not the case and that we are only watching a television show that does not accurately portray real life. But children do not understand story lines the way that an adult can. The only capability a child has is to process the actions of the characters that he sees on television. Those are the people he will find himself imitating in the playground with his playmates as they reenact the crime scene of the day from CSI. The most definitive study of the effect of media violence on children would have to come from the 1963 study that Bandura (qtd. in Frazier) conducted on 2 separate groups of children. One group watched violent programming that included violent cartoons and the other group, watched a track race on television. The results were astounding. Bandura noted (qtd. in Frazier) that: Those who saw the aggressive program (The Untouchables) were found to be more willing to hurt another child after viewing the program than those who watched the neutral program (a track race). Several other studies found that the same held true for viewing violent cartoons, and additionally that children were less likely to share their toys after viewing violent cartoons. Back in 1998, there was a study done by Bushman on regarding the way that violent TV images are stored in a child's mind and how it is accessed later on in life (qtd in Frazier). He calls the memories and its use a” prime aggressive constructs” in the sense that: ... when we are in a real situation that is similar to the memory we have stored (the violent vignette we saw on TV), that memory is activated and the memory or script becomes available to us. He then concluded his study by theorizing that because a child is exposed on a long term basis to these images and violent scenarios, the harm done to the child is much more severe. A child who is constantly exposed to media violence at the age of 8 gets the images and situations so deeply ingrained into his “sponge” of a brain that it is impossible to alter the effects that it will have on his being. Therefore this exposure can actually be a basis by which is future aggressive behavior can be predicted. (Beckmann, Jeanne Phd. “Television Violence: What the Research Says About its Effect on Young Children”). There is also some evidence that reports that children who are exposed to violent programming have social problems and educational problems as well. It is the opinion of Dr. Jerome Singer, professor of Psychology at Yale University that the only way to limit a child's exposure to media violence is for parents to consider a television as an uninvited stranger in their home (qtd. in Beckmann). According to Dr. Singer (qtd. in Beckmann): This stranger, he says, teaches your kids to punch and kick their way through conflict resolution and this stranger tries to sell your children all kinds of products, some of which you may not approve.  Just as you would not allow a real uninvited stranger in your house, you need to think twice about what TV strangers are saying and doing to your children.  You also need to be aware of the moral and advertising messages you allow your children to see and hear without your supervision. Fighting on television. Sadly this becomes the first image of conflict resolution in a child's mind. When he watches a cartoon that has the hero beating up a villain and then turning him over to the police, that in the child's mind, is the way to end a conflict. Violence first, legalities later. It is alright to have a fight with someone whom you know is bad, provided that you win the fight. That is not the kind of conflict resolution any parent would approve of but the reality is that most children solve playground conflicts that way these days because that is what television is teaching them. It would truly seem that violent television shows are forcing our children to grow up and mature in both thought and actions long before they are prepared and properly trained to do so. Parents are so busy holding down their jobs and making sure that the household bills get paid among other things that their children's welfare sometimes falls through the cracks. This is not something most parents think is happening to their kids but the truth is. it is. There are no exceptions to this rule, unless the household the child lives in does not have a TV set. But with 93% of the families owning TV sets (Frazier, Barbara “Impact of TV Violence on Children and Adolescents”) these days, that is a far fetched idea. Our national government has not allowed these studies and observations to fall upon deaf ears. The Federal Communications Commission, better known as the FCC, has been seeking legislative action since 2007 in an effort to help curb the violent media exposure of the children. That task is not an easy one as television stations and producers lock them in battle over such trivialities as the definition of the word violent and questions about to enact such laws in cable television programming (Farhi & Ahrens “FCC Seeks to Rein in Violent TV shows). It is no longer enough for the FCC to merely slap fines on the offending TV stations that are found to be airing questionable “adult” material during a time slot that they consciously know children will be watching. At this point, the FCC does not have the power to enact any sort of punishment on tv programs that advocate too much violence during prime time. That is what the FCC is seeking to change through legislation in a law that will have far reaching coverage and including the airing of cable TV material. But industry experts doubt that the FCC will get the authorization that they seek even if it is for the benefit of majority of the population, mainly because cable TV viewers pay for the programs they watch and therefore should be exempt from any censorship rulings. (Farhi & Ahrens “FCC Seeks to Rein in Violent TV shows) It is therefore imperative that parents take control and responsibility in an effort to curb their children's exposure to violent TV media. This is not something that is impossible to do. In fact, parents during the early era of television were able to do it. It should not be harder to do in this day and age of channel blocking and locking technology that is built into our modern televisions. There are some simple steps that parents can actually follow if they are serious about limiting their child's violent media exposure. Some of the things that they can do include (Frazier, Barbara ““Impact of TV Violence on Children and Adolescents”) : Restrict television time to one or two hours per day, however, keep in mind that quantity is not as much an issue as quality... Preview ahead programs that your kids want to watch and make an informed decision as to whether they are appropriate or not. Substitute your children's favorite videos for network programming. Most kids like to watch favorite videos repeatedly. Frankly discuss any violent content with your children. Be sure that they have a firm grasp on the difference between fantasy and reality. Focus on the suffering caused by violence as opposed to messages that portray violence as acceptable.... Encourage viewing of pro-social and educational TV programming. Some research suggests that viewing television programs that enhance learning, teach moral lessons, and model caring behavior (such as Mister Rogers' Neighborhood) can be a positive influence. I have therefore concluded that television can indeed cause undue harm to the psyche of young children. These effects are the kind that can alter their being an prove to be a problem during their adult lives. We must take our jobs seriously as parents and Child Friendly TV advocates in order to see any true tv progamming changes. Works Cited American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. “Children and TV Violence”. Facts for Families. aacap.org. Mar. 2011. Web. 13 Apr. 2012. American Psychological Association. “Violence in the Media - Psychologists Help Protect Children from Harmful Effects”. Research in Action. apa.org. 19 Feb. 2004. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. Beckman, Jeanne. “Television Violence: What The Research Says About Its Effect on Young Children”. jeannebeckman.com. jeannebeckman.com. 1996. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. Farhi Paul, & Ahrens, Frank. “FCC Seeks to Rein In Violent TV Shows”. Arts & Living: Television. The Washington Post. 24 Apr. 2007. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. Frazier, Barbara. “The Impact of TV Violence on Adolescents and Children”. Children and Media. The Successful Parent. 19 Apr. 2012. Web. 19 Apr. 2012. Hewitt, Doug. “Negative Effects of TV Violence”. Children & Media Violence. livestrong.com. 11 May 2007. Web. 15 Apr. 2012. Read More