T.V Violence Affects Are Kids :: essays research papers

Television is the biggest form of mul measuredia out there. Its most important role is to say the news and maintain communications between people around the world. Televisions most influential, yet most serious aspect is its shows for entertainment. Violent childrens shows like Mighty Morphin index finger Rangers and adult shows like NYPD Blue and Homicide almost always fail to show the characters resolve their differences in a non-violent manner, instead they show a more socialise resolution, where the good guy beats the crap out of the bad guy. In one episode of NYPD Blue three people were murdered in the swing out of an hour. "Contemporary television creates a seemingly insatiable appetite for amusement of all kinds without regard for social or moral benefits" (Foley, 41). Findings over the past twenty years by three Surgeon Generals, the Attorney Generals Task Force on Family Violence, the American Medical Association, the National Institute of Mental Health, the Am erican psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and other medical authorities indicate that televised violence is harmful to all of us, but particularly to the mental health of children (Foley, 70-71). In 1989 the results of a five-year try out by the American Psychological Association indicated that the average child has witnessed 8,000 murders and 100,000 other acts of violence on television by the time he or she has completed sixth grade. In further studies it was determined that by the time that same child graduates from high school he or she will have spent 22,000 hours watching television, twice as many hours as he or she has spent in school (Lamson 124).     In a study by the Centers for Disease Control, published by the JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), it was shown that homicide rates had doubled between the introduction of television in the 1950s and the end of the study in 1994. In that same study other possible causes for the vast increases in violence were studied, "the baby boom effect, trends in urbanization, economic trends, trends in alcohol abuse, the role of detonating device punishment, civil unrest, the availability of guns, and exposure to television"(Lamson 32). Each of these purported causes was tested in a variety of ways to see whether it could be eliminated as a conjectural contributor to doubling the crime rate in the United States, and one by each of them was invalidated, except for television.