Television Violence has a Negative Effect on Society

     Nowadays, technology has been taken up a tremendous part of people’s daily lives. One of the most significant media is television. People watch movies, see commercials and listen to the news from the television. At the same time, people may see fierce programs in television which means the appearance of television violence. Although it is good to demonstrate violent events to people from television, sometimes it is beneficial to think about measure the effectiveness of television violence, especially when children are involved in it. The useless “safe-harbor” policies on banning TV programs and the accidents occurred on children give evidence of the negative effect on television violence among children.

       First of all, the uncertain policies produce errors for children to absorb violent materials and bring negative effects in the society. In order to prevent children and youth from watching indecent television, the U.S. Supreme Court has established “safe harbor” policy to distinguish adult programming in television from 22:00 to 06:00 on the next day. However, this policy is not as effective as people think. According to the book Children, Adolescents, and Media Violence, “as Potter (2003) points out, such “safe-harbor” policies are doomed for failure, for throughout the evening, even as late as 11:00 p.m., children and adolescents are watching television in large numbers. As evidence, Potter provides the following information: Immediately following the family hour, the number of children who continue to watch television drops by only 12%, leaving around 10.8 million youthful viewers. By 11:00 p.m., nearly 3.2 million children and 3 million adolescents are still watching television. (Kirsh 79)” As the book says, policy of banning adult programming has not worked much. As a result, children and youth may absorb indecent program in this period of time. The negative effects during these time periods may bring accidents among children.

       Moreover, by seeing violent actions children have the attempts to imitate violence and create tragic results. Bandura and his colleagues, who studied adolescents for a long period of time, had done some experimental studies with children. “A young child was presented with a film, back-projected on a television screen, of a model who kicked and punished an inflated plastic doll. The child was then placed in a playroom setting and the incidence of aggressive behavior was recorded. (Osofsky 79)” From the studies, Bandura claimed that “children who had viewed the aggressive film were more aggressive in the playroom that those children who had not observed the aggressive model”. Though this is an early study, the results from the study still stand today. The stimulus of violence among children is true. Parents should prevent their children from watching indecent materials because children may imitate the actions and bring tragic results.

       Last but not least, the aggressive behaviors children learnt from televisions are the cause of millions of tragedies. Children Who See Too Much, a book tells about lessons from the child witness to violence project, gives an evidence of youth accident. A fourteen-year-old boy who was an expert on TV video games was involved in the event. “An editorial in the New York Times pointed out that the fourteen-year-old boy who killed three people in the school shooting in Paducah, Kentucky, fired eight shots and hit eight people. (Groves 25-26)” This is one of a million accidents that happened before. A single child associated with eleven people’s lives because of playing video games in television. It is scary to imagine the terror impact on the society.

       Television violence does not only have negative effects on the society by unexpected accidents but may also through the psychological development throughout children’s growth and other behaviors. It is necessary to take television violence under control and maintain a healthy environment for children growth.

Works Cited:

Groves, Betsy McAlister. Children Who See Too Much. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 2002. Print. (Pg. 25, 26)

Kirsh, Steven J. Children, Adolescents, and Media Violence. California: Sage Publications, 2006. Print. (Pg. 8)

Osofsky, Joy D. Children in a Violent Society. New York: The Guilford Press, 1997. Print. (Pg. 79)