Sponge Bob Square Pant Is Taking Over

Sponge Bob Square Pant is Taking Over

FACT: The average American child will have watched 100,000 acts of televised violence, including 8000 depictions of murder, by the time he or she finishes sixth grade (approximately 13 years old). We live in an era where both parents are often working and children have more unsupervised time. The children of America spend their time on many different activities. One of the most time consuming activities is watching television. "The average child spends more time watching TV than in school. On average, kids spend about 20 or more hours each week watching TV, which is more time than is spent in other activity besides sleeping" (Children Now, 1998). Television plays a large role in the social and emotional development of children today. One good quality that television has is that it conveys information and happenings around the world that they may not otherwise know about, but some people have been questioning whether television does more harm than good. Many have been analyzing what affect violence in adult shows as well as children's shows may have on children.

Most parents allow their children to watch so called "kid's shows" without even thinking about what might be contained within them. How many times has a certain hunter been seen hunting a certain "wascally wabbit"? Most people would say "how can a cartoon about a man hunting affect a child?" At first it may seem that it has no effect, but, looking closer, it is easy to see that Bugs Bunny has many human traits. Two of these traits are speaking English and walking upright. Something else that adds to this is that sometimes children cannot make the distinction between fantasy and reality. Quickly a cartoon about a man hunting a rabbit can turn into a story of murder. Another cartoon

character that may harm children is Yosimite Sam. When he becomes angry, he

begins to fire his pair of guns into the air and at other characters. This could cause children to act violently to appease their anger. This includes hitting and throwing things. This is an extreme view of the situation, but who is to say that at least part of it is not true?

"NTVS found that most of the "high risk" portrayals of violence on TV occurred in children's programs where attractive characters inflicted justified, realistic, remorseless violence on victims who appeared to suffer few consequences. Basic cable channels targeted at the child audience carried the lion's share of these problematic portrayals" (National Television Violence Study, 1997). There are many cases dealing with the death of one or more children due to them "trying-out" a move they watched on television that "look real cool". Even if there was only one case, that would be one too many for me not to think we had taken a wrong turn somewhere. As a society, we have become so numb to these kinds of television shows that it becomes nothing to let children watch them and try out certain moves and tricks on their little brother or sister, or even a next door neighbor. "Watching videos may also induce violent and aggressive feelings, potentially cultivating attitudes that may lead to certain types of violent behavior" (Mitroff, 2000).

Children see violence everyday in their cartoons, but what about shows that they watch in which people star. These shows will more than likely cause more violence than cartoons would. While watching

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