Watching Violent Television Programmes, Stimulates Violent

Behaviour in Children

overview

• Violence on the TV

• Television Violence and

Children

• Television violence causes

aggressive behavior in

children

• Children do not know TV

violence is fake

• TV violence- brain

Violence on the TV

NAEYC (The National Association for the

Education of Young Children) A statement by the NAEYC on ‘Media Violence and Children’ (NAEYC, 1990) reports that violence levels on TV have increased since 1980 and is still increasing. • 1986, air time for war cartoons

increased to 43 hours per week, compare this to 1.5 hours per week back in 1982.

• In the same report it asserts that in 1980 there was a recorded number 18.6 acts of violence per hour and had increased to about 26.4 in 1993. (Smith, 1993)

American Psychological Association (APA)

In a task-force report by the APA on ‘TV and Society’ (Huston, et al., 1992) shows that • average child (which

watches 2-4 hours of TV daily) will leave elementary school having already witnessed 8,000 murders and more than 100,000 other various acts of violence on TV(Smith, 1993)

George Gerbner

George Gerbner carried out studies at the University of Pennsylvania that show that children's television shows display about 20 violent acts each hour. (Abelard, 2013)

Key Facts

TV Violen

ce

Key Facts-TV Violence

A Journal from the Kaiser Family Foundation organisation (KFF) called Key Facts, released an edition where it is titled ‘TV Violence’. The journal gives the following facts in their #3335 edition on TV Violence.

Key Facts-TV Violence

• Nearly 2 out of 3 TV programs contained some violence, averaging about 6 violent acts per hour.

• Fewer than 5% of these programs featured an anti-violence theme or pro-social message emphasizing alternatives to or consequences of violence.

• Violence was found to be more prevalent in children’s programming (69%) than in other types of programming (57%). In a typical hour of programming, children’s shows featured more than twice as many violent incidents than other types of programming • The average child who watches 2 hours of cartoons a day may see nearly 10,000 violent incidents each year, of which the researchers estimate that at least 500 pose a high risk for learning and imitating aggression and becoming desensitized to violence.

• The number of prime-time programs with violence increased over the three years of the study, from 53% to 67% on broadcast television and from 54% to 64% on basic cable. Premium cable networks have the highest percentage of shows with violence, averaging 92% since 1994.(Henry J Kaiser, 2003)

Television Violence and Children

1. Television violence causes

aggressive

behavior in

children

Bandura and RossUsing two groups of kids (A and B), they showed group A violent clip of a child handling a doll very aggressively (e.g. hitting and kicking the doll). Later in the experiment, Group A kids were put in a room with the same doll, and surprisingly they all treated the doll in same manner they had seen on the clip, by hitting and kicking it. Group B, which did not watch the video, treated the doll well (I.e. normal). (Oracle, 2011)

George Gerbner

Children tend to act differently after being exposed to TV violence. Similar experiment to Bandura and Ross. A difference was seen between the two groups, the ones who watched the violent cartoon were more likely to be impatient, disobedient and forceful. (Abelard, 2013)

The International Society for Research on Aggression (IRSA)• The International Society for Research

on Aggression (IRSA) concludes that the evidence from TV violence studies are sufficient enough to show that ‘media violence consumption’ (Telegraph Reporters, 2012) can activate hostile thoughts or feelings already within.

• The commission concluded: "One may also become more vigilant for hostility and aggression in the world, and therefore, begin to feel some ambiguous actions by others, such as being bumped in a crowded room, are deliberate acts of provocation." (Telegraph Reporters, 2012)

Jeffrey Johnson

Research scientist of Columbia University, Jeffrey Johnson gave the following statement, "We found that teenagers who, at mean age 14, watched more than three hours a day of television were much more likely than those who watched less than one hour a day of television to commit subsequent acts of aggression against other people” (Blakey, 2002)

• Also in the science article by Jeffrey. J, a surprising result to one of his studies he explains by saying "At mean age 22, the females seem to be more affected by television, by extensive television viewing," Jeffrey, actually expected males at age 14 to be more vulnerable. His theory as to why is because males seem to watch Violent TV shows earlier than females (Blakely, 2002)

L. Rowell Huesmann and Laramie D. Taylor

In a research paper by Huesman and Taylor, they used in their paper a very informative graph that shows the relative strength of known “public health threats”. This graph includes media violence, since their research is gathered therefore TV violence is considered a health threat. Notice that media violence is 2nd relatively strong threat.

2. Children do not know TV violence

is fake

George Gerbner

George Gerbner, at the University of Pennsylvania, has conducted studies showing that children's television shows contain about 20 violent acts each hour. The studies also show that in watching more TV, children start visualizing the world as a “dangerous place”. It is for this reason why some children actually act aggressive, when they are actually being defensive (Abelard, 2013)

Gunter and McAleer

In an Essay by Alison Oatey, the final reason TV violence is bad from kids is imitation. The child re-enact the observed performance or deed. Gunter and McAleer called this “observational learning”. • The child is never aware that what he is

doing is wrong, we see this as violence although it is a temporary side-effect, because child will grow up and learn right from wrong.

• An example would be the Jamie Bulger case; it was a case where 2 youngsters killed a toddler. Alison Oaty later writes “It is believed that the two youngsters that killed him had been watching the film ‘Child’s Play 3’ and had then imitated the violence they had seen in the film. This consequently killed Jamie Bulger.” (Oaty, 1998)

TV Violence and The Brain

Science DailyAn article of the Science Daily News on the 10 December, 2010 was showing a new advance in scientific study of the brain link to TV violence. The article titled “This is your Brain on violent Media” by Columbia University Medical Centre showed a picture of the parts of your brain that is affected during the viewing of any violent media