Violence In The Media

When children are young they are very impressionable by the things around them. Often kids are influenced by what they see. If kids are watching shows with a lot of violence they too will tend to act out this violence. Parents today have a lot of responsibility to make sure that their children are being supervised on what they are watching to make sure that they understand what they are seeing. And what kind of impact violence could have on their children. Violence on television and other forms of communication has increased and has lead to a negative impact on the youth of today. The government and parents need to set guidelines and restrictions on what we our showing our kids.

One of the major problems is there are a lot of ways kids can access violent or sexual material. One of the newest and most controversial is that of the Internet. Kids can log on to sites that may not be suitable to them at such a young age. Kids can get access to the Internet pretty easily. One concern is that kids might use libraries or schools to gain access to material that is not appropriate for them. One solution might be to censor the Internet. This could have some negative affects because Internet censorship would violate the First Amendment rights for adults. Another solution that schools and libraries are using is installing programs that will filter out sites that are inappropriate for children. Parents can also install these programs on their home computers and wouldn't have to monitor their children when they are online. The only downside is that some sites that may have valuable information might also be filtered because the program cannot always determine what sites may have beneficial information.

Violence on television can lead to aggressive behavior in children. If kids see violence on television they tend to act out this violence. Television often glorifies violence in the shows that kids watch. One of the newest shows that glorify violence is Power Rangers. This would probably lead to kids acting more aggressive because they are constantly watching it on television. There have been over a thousand studies that link aggressive behavior with violence on television. One such study was done on the show Date Line. They took a room full of kids and showed them two different programs one being violent and the other being a learning program. They came to the conclusion that the children tended to act more aggressive when they watched violent shows.

Parents need to take responsibility in teaching their children about violence. Children are very impressionable at a young age. Children don't know the difference between television and real life. Explain to them that the shows they watch might seem real, but the people are just acting and it's not real. It is the parents' job to sit down with their children and explain to them the consequences of violence physical and emotional. Parents need to also explain what happens to people that commit violent crimes. Parents need to monitor what kind of programs their kids are watching. Cut down on the amount of television they watch this will also cut down on the violence your children see.

There are also long lasting effects on children exposed to violence. A study done by Paik and Comstock to see if there was any long lasting effects of violence on children. They took a third grade class in a small upstate New York town. They studied what the children watched, their family background, and asked teachers who were more or less aggressive. They came to the conclusion that there was a direct relationship between children's level of aggressive behavior and their television viewing. They then followed up on this study ten years later when the children were eighteen. He concluded that there were some long-term effects of early television viewing on later aggressive behavior. They then went one step further and followed up on the children at age thirty. They now found that there was a relationship between early television viewing and arrest and conviction for violent crimes; spouse abuse, child abuse, murder, and aggravated assault. This became a very controversial study, but there is a lot of evidence that violence has long-term effects.

Why doesn't the government step in and clean up television? There is a very broad area of children's television. This is a very sensitive issue for Congress and the FCC because of public concern. We know there is a relationship

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