Children from the ages 6-11 spend more time watching television thanthey do in the classroom.
The level of violence that they see on prime timetelevision is about five violent acts per hour and the level of violence onSaturday that includes cartoons morning programming is about 20 to 25 violentacts per hour. At this rate, the average American child will see 8,000 murdersbefore they finish elementary school!As a child sits in front of baby-sitting television, her eyes are gluedto the viewing of shoot em’ up rip em’ up kind of entertainment. We have toremember that the entertainment media plays an extremely powerful role in theformation of values and morals, to all youngsters’ minds of all ages, allsocioeconomic levels, and all levels of intelligence. These programs “play”with kids’ minds; these programs have a tremendous negative effect on ourchildren.
We, as a society, must save our future and take an active role inprotecting our children from the violence on our television. Television cartoons often feature dehumanized characters, such asTransformers and the Ninja Turtles, who engage in the destructive acts ofviolence by fighting our real life social problems. With acts of violence, kidslearn to think that’s how they should solve their problems. MTV’s Beavis andButt-head encourages fire, smoking, foul language, drinking and stealing. Withthese bad attitudes seen depicted as normal on TV shows kids are lead tobelieve it is cool be have that type attitude Is this what we really want oursociety, especially our younger generation, to believe?If we truly thought that television had no impact on viewers, why wouldcompanies spend billion of dollars on television advertising? If commercialshave an effect, then so do the shows that the children watch. For example,youngsters mimic many of the violent acts that they see such as Beasvis and But-head.
One day, a five year old boy watch his favorite cartoon, Beavis and Butt-head, and sees the characters pull one of their famous arson stunts. And theresult, he sets his own house ablaze and his younger sister is killed. Children do learn from television especially when they lack direct exposureor first hand experience with violent grotesque acts. These do take a toll onchildren and the way they will view life as they grow up. I know some who thatare sweet, innocent, full of dreams, hopes, laughter, and life. These kids havelearned about there environment from their parents, not by watching television.
When I am a parent, I will not show programs with bodies flying around the roomand blood spurting ever where. At this point, the parents’ role must be towatch television with their children so they can help children understand thatviolence hurts people physically and emotionally. Our society should take a long hard look in the mirror; the values oftoday’s youth are reflections of the values of their elders. We should rememberthe words of the father in Harry Chapin’s song “Cat’s in the Cradle” when hecomes to realize his son “He’s grown up just like me. My boy was just like me. “Violence on the television is a very real problem is our culture.
Wemost see that it only causes negative effects on our society. It is hard totell if the problem is the media or if the problem is in our values as a culture.We must help turn back the growing culture of violence as quickly as possible.The human toll on our society is too great to look the other way.Category: Music and Movies
