Children and Violence on Television

Our world today is becoming an increasingly more violent place. Many people claim that some of this violence is due to the way children are raised in their homes. One factor that these people claim causes children to become more aggressive is the amount of violence these children are exposed to from television programs, even cartoons.

The site that I found talks of children's exposure to violence on tv. The site states the fact, "The average American child will have watched 100,000 acts of televised violence, including 8000 depictions of murder, by the time he or she finishes sixth grade (approximately 13 years old)." This site also includes a number of different studies done on this topic by 5 different people.

One study conducted by George Gerbner at the University of Pennsylvania reported that children watching television observe approximately 20 acts of violence per hour and that children who see this much violence assume that the world is a very dangerous place. Also in a study done at Pennsylvania State University, 100 pre-school children were observed. Half of these children watched violent programs while the other half watched non-violent shows. After watching the programs, all of the children were observed. The study reported that the children who watched the violent episodes were acting in drastically different manners than the children who watched non-violent episodes, characteristically more aggressive, angry, and impatient.

One of the other studies included in the website was carried out by Huesmann. Huesmann's research states that 59% of children who watch shows with an above-average amount of violence were, later in life, involved in more than the average number of aggressive and violenct incidents.

Violence is a major problem in today's society, and we must do all that is in our power to make sure that the world becomes a safer place, even if this means monitoring the shows and cartoons that today's children are exposed to. Here is the site I used:
http://www.abelard.org/tv/tv.htm