TV Violence: Impact on Society and Ways to Reduce It - Essay Sample

Introduction

Since the invention of the television in the late 19th century and early 20th century, both good and evil have emanated. Televisions serve many purposes among those disseminating information and keeping people informed of what is going on around them as well as entertainment. Nonetheless, violent television content has, over the years, impacted society negatively. Violent television content can be classified as; news on suicide bombings, war casualties, and troubled individuals. Other forms of television violence are often portrayed through horror movies and cartoons. This paper, therefore, seeks to elucidate why violent television content has had a negative effect on society.

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A research conducted on television violence by the National Association for the Education of Young Children reported that the illustration of violent content on the media had significantly increased from 1980 through 1990 following the directive by the Federal Communication Commission to liberalize commercial television for children in 1982 (Bushman 16).

Some of the examples that were provided by NAEYC include; increase in the number of hours from 1.5 hours each week in 1982 to 43 hours every week by 1986 for war cartoons with violent fighting. The second example was that of children's' programs, which aired approximately 18.6 violent actions per hour in 1980 and later significantly increased to 26.4 violent deeds per hour.

Secondly, in an aim to support this claim, the American Association task force conducted a research which revealed that by the time a child who watches two to four hours of television consecutively, finishes elementary school, she or he would have been exposed to at least 10,000 varied acts of violence, and at least 8000 murders (Bushman 16).

Over the years, as seen from the above text, more and more children are increasingly becoming heavy consumers of the media content. And while this violent exposure may tend to have short term effects on older adults, children are often adversely affected. As children grow, they develop violent behaviors such as bullying the weaker kids (Hoffner, Cynthia et al, 123). Furthermore, they may become physically aggressive, leading to expulsions and suspensions. As they continue to grow into adulthood, the effects of television violence may be redirected into physical abuses of spouses, and the use of vulgar language, to name a few.

Consequently, these kinds of behaviors result in adverse outcomes on both the individuals and the society at large. It becomes increasingly difficult for a married couple to live peacefully, resulting in broken homes. Other effects include increased crimes and social disconnects. Still, in other cases, cases of anxiety tend to rise in adults (Bushman 2006, pg 56).

Conclusion

In conclusion, most scientific research results points to a relationship between violent, aggressive behavior and television violence. As such, parents should be careful with what they allow their children to watch. Violent television shows may be regarded 'cool' by most children but what they fail to understand Is that the content slowly diffuses into their minds, where they end up adopting such acts only to start questioning their violence later in life

Works Cited

Bushman, Brad J. "Effects of warning and information labels on attraction to television violence in viewers of different ages." Journal of Applied Social Psychology 36.9 (2006): 2073-2078. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0021-9029.2006.00094.x

Hoffner, Cynthia, et al. "Support for censorship of television violence: The role of the third-person effect and news exposure." Communication Research 26.6 (1999): 726-742. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/009365099026006004