Introduction

In the US...

The average household has a television on 7 hours a day.
The average child watches 4 hours of television per day, 94% of which is spent watching programs not produced for children.
By the time the average child graduates from high school, they will have spent over 50% more time in front of a television than in front of a teacher. In fact...
According to the American Pediatric Association (1990), by the time the average child graduates from high school, they will have spent more time watching television than anything else other than sleeping!

When you consider these facts, it is only natural to ask what the effect of all this television viewing is on the behavior of a child. Further, consider these facts:

In the US...

According to the American Psychological Association (1992), before the average child finishes elementary school, they will have viewed over 100,000 acts of violence including 8,000 murders!
By 16, they will have viewed 200,000 acts of violence including 33,000 murders!
Prime-time television averages 5 acts of violence per hour. The average for children's cartoons is over 23 acts of violence per hour, and children's programming, in general, averages 26.4 violent acts per hour. The network average is 36.6 acts per hour, coming out to 15% of television programming time.

What effect does all this violence have on the children viewing it?

The overwhelming consensus is that television violence has several negative effects on children . These are:

1. Increased Aggressive Behavior: They learn that it is acceptable to use violence to resolve conflicts.

2. Desensitization: They become desensitized to real-world violence.

3. Fear: They begin to fear becoming victims themselves.

Increased Aggressive Behavior

Middle childhood is a very important period in the child's development. L. Huesmann, who has taken an information-processing perspective, has shown in his research, that there is a strong correlation between television viewing in middle childhood and aggression in adulthood. Children between the ages of 8 and 11 seem to be especially vulnerable. His research shows that children who view more violent television at the age of 8 are more likely to be convicted of a crime at the age of 30. (Huesmann, L.R., Eron, L.D., Lefkowitz, M.M., Walder, L.O. The stability of aggression over time and generations. Developmental Psychology, 1984, 20, 1120-1134).

During middle childhood, the child is developing more sophisticated scripts, or schemas, concerning how to handle conflicts. Television can influence the child by giving the impression that aggression is an acceptable way to solve problems and handle conflicts. One analysis of television showed (Potter, W.J., Warren, R. Considering policies to protect children from TV violence. Journal of Communication, 1996, 46(4), 116-138):

Perpetrators of television violence only showed remorse for their acts about 4% of the time.
Only about 20% of the time were the perpetrators punished.

This can be made even more significant if the perpetrator is a hero figure and the violent act is portrayed as justified. Huesmann suggests that images of violence which are accepted as appropriate behavior and lead to positive consequences, can then lead the child into incorporating aggressive behavior into his/her own problem-solving scripts.

Albert Bandura, who takes a social learning perspective, has taken the view that children learn by imitating those they identify with. Characters that the child connects with, either because of gender, race, or location, are more likely to affect the child's behavior. A television character who is portrayed as good is more likely to be imitated by a child. The child would no longer be inhibited by guilt or fear of punishment because of the positive portrayal of the violence. In households where aggressive behavior is used by the parents, or where the parents don't limit the television viewing of the child, this effect can be especially strong (Singer, J.L., Singer, D.G., Family experiences and television viewing as predictors of children's imagination, restlessness, and aggression. Journal of Social Issues, 1986, 42, 107-124).

Desensitization

Children can become desensitized to violence and the physical and emotional plight of others by observing television violence. The fight or flight nervous system, innately given to us in order for us to deal with situations of immanent danger, can become significantly suppressed when children are overexposed to violence on television. Children have been shown to become less and less physiologically responsive when increased exposure to violence on television was given to them . Kids that have already had high exposure to violence through the television are physiologically less aroused by violence on television than children that have had low exposure.

In one experiment involving young boys, the boys were divided into two groups. The low-television-exposure group watched television 4 hours or less per week for the preceding 2 years, while the high-television-exposure group averaged 25 or more hours per week. When exposed to filmed violence, the high exposure group were significantly less aroused as measured by their physiological response (Cline, V.B., Croft, R.G., Courrier S., Desensitization of children to television violence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1973, 27(3), 360-365).

Our emotions are our physiological responders to what we are thinking . When we are put into a frightening situation our fight or flight aspect of our nervous system is preparing us for a physical response to the stimulus, for example, " get out of the way !" When we are in a scary movie we may be experiencing this same nervous system response to the stimulus from the film . Is this stimulus real ? NO! It is just a movie . Nevertheless we feel frightened . This is because when we are perceiving scary thoughts we feel scared . Our emotions are responders to what we are thinking. The emotions are dumb; they have no intellect and only respond to what you perceive things to be. When kids are initially exposed to violence on television , they will respond to it physiologically. As exposure to television violence increases, the child becomes less and less emotionally responsive to the violent stimulus from the television .

Fear

Children not only learn to be more aggressive from watching violent TV programs, they also learn to see the world as a dangerous place. In his research, Professor George Gerbner, dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, has shown that children not only identify with aggressors who are similar to them, but also with victims. He calls this the "Mean World Syndrome". His Cultivation Theory argues that television creates a "reality" of its own that can effect the way a person sees the real world. The over-representation of violence on television, therefore, can have the effect of developing an exaggerated fear of victimization. Heavy viewers of television learn to believe that the incidence of violence in the world is higher than lighter viewers believe.

Gerbner believes that television creates a "power structure" in which certain groups are more likely to be portrayed as victims of violence than others. His analysis of television has shown that women and minorities, are at the bottom of this power structure. They, therefore are more likely to see the world as dangerous (Morgan, M., Symbolic victimization and real-world fear. Human Communication Research,1983, 9(2),146-157). His research has also shown that victims are more likely to live in rural neighborhoods as opposed to suburban neighborhoods. People who live in neighborhoods similar to those shown on television are, therefore, more likely to develop a fear of victimization. This effect applies not only for children, but also adults. Children however, because they identify more strongly to television characters than adults, are more likely to be affected by it.

Now that you know how television violence can affect your children, what can you do to protect them? Go to our "Tips For Parents" page for ideas on how to lessen the effect of television violence on your children.

Tips For Parents

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