Television And Violence

Boink! Boom! Crack! The sounds of the fight scene rage on. Many have fallen in
this particularly bloody battle. The good guys have taken their losses but
struggle on to what is seemingly a victory. Their aggression is fierce and helps
them. Fires consume the background; men and women lie on the ground in pain.

Even if it weren’t for the bombs, missiles, bullets, etc. that are flying
around, hand-to-hand combat would have got the better of them. It was a classic
battle scene when looking back at it, a true testament of blood, hell, and gore.

This may sound like a heroic made-for-TV movie shown only on primetime in the
hopes of recruiting a mature audience. But it is not. In fact, it is just
another Saturday-morning special of GI Joe, “The Real American Hero,” that I
watched with my brother and cousins. We were religious followers of the show,
tuning in every week to see how Sergeant Slaughter, Duke and the rest of the
gang would handle the likes of King Cobra and his cronies. GI Joe’s early
morning time slot encouraged kids, like us, to tune in every weekend. While
eating our CheeriosTM and Frosted FlakesTM we got a dose of some real fightin’
action, in excess of fifty violent scenes for the morning: there is more than
enough to fill the appetite. The truth is, violence on television is on every
single day. It takes its toll on society, especially children. The damage done
by violence on television is detrimental and confirmed by statistics, case
studies, and personal experiences. Fistfights, shootouts, car crashes, rapes…

Take your pick. Violence is everywhere on television, sometimes gory and
gruesome, other times clean and remote. It is not just the Saturday morning
cartoons; clips from action-adventure series, the nightly news and MTV are
interwoven with violence and extremely mature content. Prime-time programs can
average eight hostile acts per hour; children’s shows four times as much (Bajpai,
1996, ps. 45-52). To television Programmers, violence is depicted as a normal,
justified response to conflict and threat. They will encourage identification
with the aggressor; domination and submission, to them, are often equated with
pleasure and worth. Yet numerous researchers have put much time into discovering
why children are so attached by the television and the action that takes place
within it. They prove that it is definitely a major source of violent behavior
in children. Their research proves time and time again that aggression and
television viewing do go hand in hand. The truth about television violence and
children has been shown. Many people and critics try to ignore it and hope that
it will go away. Others do not even seem to care and try to attack these ideas.

However, the facts are undeniable and all the results point to one conclusion:
Television violence causes children to be violent and the effects can be
life-long. The effects of the television are first visible even at the most
basic level of life, children and adolescents. The modern-day extent of viewing
by humans, especially Americans, is astronomical. Children begin to watch
television at very early ages, often when they are newborns. At this time they
are obviously not able to follow along or be influenced by it, but they are
subjected to it nevertheless. This early start will lead most childhood viewers
into a cult-like trance by the time they reach the age of three. In between
breakfast and lunch, playtime and naptime, class and dinner, all children find a
way to watch the tube. The typical American household has the television set on
for more than seven hours each day and children ages two to eleven spend an
average of twenty-eight hours per week viewing (Murray, 1996, p. 1). Some
research has also estimated that by the time a child or teen of today’s
generation reaches the age of seventy, he will have spent nearly seven years of
his life watching television. That is nearly ten percent of one’s life lives
watching television. That is insane; to say that you and I will spend years upon
years, watching television. There is so much that people, even we, could do in a
seven-year period. Entire wars can be fought in seven years, college educations
can be attained, millions of people will be born and millions will die, many
things can happen that have more significance than seven years of television.

That is a very large percentage of time to be doing solely one thing, and the
fact that that one