Essays

Violence on TV Most people in our society generally has the opinion that violence on television increases aggression in children and adolescents. Does it? Who is to say whether television has a positively direct effect or a Positive correlation?

However, the majority of the people who have researched this topic have discovered that violence on television is indeed one of the prime factors contributing to the increase in violent and Aggressive behavior among the youth in society.

That is to say there has been a growth of strong evidence to suggest that television violence does play an important and contributory part in the learning of aggression. In other words, violence in the media helps promote and encourage Children and adolescents to freely express their abuse behavior.

As a result, the topic of my essay will help support the issue that violence in the media causes abusive behavior in youths. Furthermore, I will emphasize if there are any differences in aggressive behavior between the genders.

By nature when babies first begin to learn, they do so by imitating other people's behaviors. That is to say, children are born ready to imitate adult behavior because much of human behavior is learned by observing another person's behavior and, in some cases, imitating it.

 One of the first imitations of a newborn baby is the imitation of adults' facial movements. For example, in the book Infant and Child, by Judith Rich Harris and Robert M. Lifebelt, it shows a baby girl only six days old sticking out her tongue in imitation of her mother's actions.

This clearly shows that from the moment a child’s born, he or she is already learning from observing. Therefore, as the child grows up and starts watching television, the child cannot distinguish between what is reality and what is Fantasy.

In the minds of young children, television is a source of entirely factual information regarding how the world works. For instance, as a child I could remember imitating violent acts after watching violent movies such as Superman; X man, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Rocky. It felt Fun to imitate these so called heroes because it seemed like the characters in the movies were Invincible.

Moreover, the main characters in the movies Ware always liked and respected. There are many other examples that confirm that people imitate violence scenes on television. For instance, the cartoon Beavis and Butthead on TV in the United States was widely criticized for depicting the cartoon characters shaped like cigarettes.

The cartoon also gained national attention when a young five year old fan from the United States Set fire to his house after watching the show. This was due to the fact that in one of the episodes, Beavis and Butthead were going around setting fires to houses.

In South Africa the homicide rate declined by 7 present. In fact, in 2002 the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMB) did a study to conclude If violence on television increases hostile Behaviors in people. They also determined that people will imitate the violent acts seen in the media.

In addition, the NIMB reported that television violence causes aggression, and that a distorted world presented on television causes heavy viewers to see the real world as more hostile and scary than it really is. What gender is more likely to imitate aggressive behavior?

It is generally agreed that boys are moral naturally aggressive than girls. In fact, Bandera, Ross and Ross have concluded that boys are more likely to imitate violent behavior and their aggression comes forth more when it ill stimulated by outside models.

The tendency for boys to be more aggressive than girls is the largest and most consistent gender difference in behavior, and is quite clear by the age or 2 or 2 1/2. Moreover, the effect of television watching on children’s aggressiveness was studied by Leonard Enron, of the University of Illinois.

He concluded that boys were significantly more aggressive than girls after watching violent shows. Ten years later, he conducted a study on the same children when they were nineteen Years old.

This time there was no correlation between television viewing and aggressive behavior although there was a positive correlation between the boy’s television viewing habit at the age of Nine and their aggressive behavior and age nineteen.

Thus, for boys (though not for girls), watching violent TV shows at age 9 appeared to lead town increase in aggressiveness at age 19. In short, most of the evidence shown throughout the essay concludes that the media indeed increases violent and aggressive behaviors in people.

Therefore, with this available information, why do parents let their children watch these violent movies and television shows? The television networks and movie producers should not be the only ones blamed for violent scenes.

The real blame should be directed at the parents. In .addition, limiting children's exposure to television violence should become part of the public health agenda.