Children and Television Violence Essay Example For Students

Children and Television Violence Essay Through what they experience on television, children are forced into adulthood at too young of an age. The innocence of youth is lost when children stare endlessly at a screen displaying the horrors of murder, rape, assault, devastating fire, and other natural disasters. Although these are occurrences in everyday life, things adults have grown accustomed to hearing about, children do not have the maturity level to deal with these tragedies appropriately. Childrens behavior changes because they become desensitized to the violence. There are many preventative techniques that can be applied to ensure that negativity on television will not interfere with a childs development.Children see violent acts on television and make an attempt to process it, and in doing so, their innocence is lost. According to Dr. David Elkind, president emeritus, National Association for the Education of Young Children, Television forces children to accommodate a great deal and inhibits the assimilation of mate rial. Consequently, the television child knows a great deal more than he or she can ever understand. This discrepancy between how much information children have and what they can process is the major stress of television. (160) Childrens minds are not fully developed; therefore, they can not be expected to understand the violence on television. The media, specifically television, has become more and more violent, in not all too subtle ways, exposing many children to behaviors not appropriate to a young audience. Remember the Menendez brothers, who ruthlessly shot their parents as they ate ice cream and watched TV in their family room, planted in childrens minds the worst possibility that a parent could die violently at the hands of a child. (Medved, et. al. 243) Seeing the violence, hearing about it, watching news reports about violent acts committed by real people, especially other children, affects the viewer negatively. Children can not relate to what they see when they are so young, making the act of watching violent television extremely questionable. Children should not know about murder and rape; however according to Gloria Tristani, Commissioner for the Federal Communications Commission, by the time they finish elementary school, children have witnessed 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence. (Tristani website) Children should not be allowed to view such behavior as they are far too young to comprehend the severity of what they see. Younger children are more susceptible to the impact of television violence in part because they spend more time in front of the set. Children ages 2 to 5 watch about 28 hours of television each week, or almost 4 hours per day. (Black, et. al. 317) Older children watch about four hours less per week. These younger children are fascinated with a media that does not require the ability to read or decipher in a way they do not know how; therefore, they spend more time watching television than older school age children. Television has somewhat less appeal for the adolescent who has the mental ability to extend his or her senses with radio or print. (Elkind 73) One of the most disconcerting facts of modern life is the abundance of wasted time spent watching mindless television programs. at the end of the usual life span, the average person will have endured more than ten uninterrupted years of television, day and night, with no breaks for the potty, no sleep, no work, no school. Ten years of staring at a cathode-ray tube, looking at images that for the most part one doesnt control and never chose. (Medved, et. al. 19)A US News World Report survey of voters reveals that 91% think media mayhem contributes to real-life violence, while 54% of the public thinks violence in entertainment media is a major factor that contributes to the level of violence in America. But only 30% of those with the power to control it, the Hollywood elite, agree. (Medved, et. al. 28) Because the general population appears to have little say in how much the media portrays violent behavior, it is important to take a step back and evaluate what the children are actually exposed to. It is important that parents play a direct role in deciding what children are able to view on television. This is the best method of preventing negative reactions from watching the violence that the media portrays. A filmmaker and ESPN2 correspondent from the Atlanta area believes that parents play an important role; without them, they children have nothing to listen to except TV and movies. Those medias were not made to teach your children and take care of them. They are entertainment art. (Nathanson interview) By establishing ground rules at a very young age, children are taught lifelong lessons that will stay with them all through life. Parents can not always be where their children are, but by instilling safe choices in them from the beginning, when children are left to decide for themselves, they have a foundation to base their choice on. Process Structure And Function Process Organization In Computer Architecture EssayThe Telecommunications Act of 1996 requires that V-Chip technology be installed in all new television sets sold in the United States. (Benton website) This new technology permits individuals to block programming based on the level of violence or other characteristics. In conjunction with this new technology, the television industry implemented a program that provides a rating for network shows, allowing parents to gain further control over what children watch on television. These new ratings include special guidelines for younger viewers. The rating system contains two parts, an age based rating and a content based rating. The content ratings list violence, language, and nudity. The age based ratings have two ratings geared towards young children, TV-Y, for all children and TV-Y7, for children over the age of seven. The ratings appear in the upper left hand corner of the television screen for the first fifteen seconds of a program, giving parents a forewarning about any programming that children should not be exposed to. (Eisenstock 4 5)This V-Chip and ratings technology is an important step in preventing unwanted viewing of violence. It is especially helpful when children are left to choose a show to watch. By setting the allowable programming to only TV-Y, it is less likely that children will witness any violent acts on television. Because the ratings are determined by show producers and the network, it is important for parents to remain in an active role in participating in program viewing with children. There are times when violent acts are missed in rating judgments. If a show is rated TV-Y7, a parent needs to judge the program and make a decision to accept the rating as accurate or disregard it as incorrect. While prime-time TV contains about 5 violent acts per hourthere are over 20 violent acts per hour on childrens programming. (Tristani website) Television violence can cause negative behavioral and sociological changes in young children. Violence on television is all too common, so parents must take action and monitor what shows are to be watched. There are methods available to assist parents, some of which include the V-Chip and the new ratings system for network programs. By preventing children from witnessing violence on television, parents are helping to eliminate the desensitization that happens from witnessing such wrongdoing. BibliographyBlack, Jay, and Jennings Bryant. Introduction to Media Communication. Iowa: Brown, 1995. Eisenstock, Bobbie, PhD., and Cathryn C. Borum. A Parents Guide to the TV Ratings and V-Chip. Washington: Media, 1995. Elkind, David. The Hurried Child. Reading: Addison, 1981. Krcmar, Marina, and Patti M. Valkenburg. A Scale to Assess Childrens Moral Interpretations of Justified and Unjustified Violence and Its Repercussions. Communication Research Oct. 1999: 608-635. Lock-Out Blocks Media Violence and Provides internet Safety for Your Children. Lock-Out! n. pag. 6 June 2000 . Medved, Diane, PhD., and Michael Medved. Saving Childhood. New York: HarperCollins, 1998. Medved, Michael. Hollywood VS. America. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. Nathanson, Ian. Telephone interview. 6 June 2000. Tristani, Gloria. Children and TV Violence Speech. FCC 11 Feb. 1998: n. pag. 2 June 2002 . Words/ Pages : 2,139 / 24