this essay is about television violence and it's effects on young children.

Essay by RedHeadTwinzCollege, Undergraduate May 2002

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Violence on Television

In "television violence and its effects on young children" Betty Jo Simmons, Kelly Stalsworth, and Heather wentzel describe how television violence affect young children. They describe how 98% of all households have at least one television set in the household. They also described that young children watch at least 28 hours of television each week and before the age of 12 the average child has viewed over 8,000 murders.

Violence viewed by children is one of the main concerns with television programming today. Research shows that children between the ages of two and eight years of age are very vulnerable to violence on television because they are unable to separate what they see on television from reality. Between the 1950's and 1960's there has been a lot of public attention towards violence on television and the effects that it has on young children. There have also been studies done by the National Institutes of Mental Health, (1983) to prove that a relationship does in fact exist between television and the aggressive behavior of young children.

Teachers are also beginning to see the aggressive behavior of young children in there classrooms as well. Researchers have found that the exposure to violence on television does bring about aggressive behaviors in children and that children who were exposed to television violence were more accepting of other types of aggressive behaviors and actions seen both in reality as well as seen on television. Other studies done with the families showed that violence was almost unnoticeable to them even if it were something as horrible as a killing, families weren't thinking of it as a violent act.

In addition there is also a theory that viewers are becoming more afraid due to the violence televised on television. It is said that...