This essay, Bad advertising, is about the effect the media has on children in our society today. It specifically focuses on television watching.

Essay by Pfalashby01College, UndergraduateA+, March 2002

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Extensive viewing of violent programs on television can lead to aggression in children. Children watch an average of three to four hours a televison a day. Television is a powerful influence in shaping behavior and developing value systems. It may lead to a gradual acceptance of violence, imitation of violence, and the identification of violence within themselves.

The more a child views a violent television program the more they will become immune to violence and learn to gradually accept it. Research has shown ideal to be true. "One example: in several studies, those who watched a violent program instead of a nonviolent one were slower to intervene or to call for help when, a little later, they saw younger children fighting or playing destructively. (What do...)" Viewing the violent program caused the child to take more time to react to the situation. He had been desensitized to the violent act because he had been viewing a violent programmed show.

Television can cause a child to grow to feel immune towards violence. Perhaps our child in this case simply felt nothing but seeing what he witnessed, or maybe he had accepted it as something "normal". In either case the violent programs that children are watching are causing adverse effects. A child who has no been exposed to such violent programming on television would have reacted much quicker and intervened when they saw a younger child fighting. But television doesn't only cause children to become immune to the horror of violence, or to gradually be able to accept it as a part of the world. It also can lead to the imitation of violence from the children.

Television violence causes an imitation and a heightened sense of aggression among younger children. This proposes a much more of a problem then simply accepting...