A discussion about violence on television and its affect on children.
This paper examines the connection between the level of violence on television and in films and the increase of child violence in America. School shootings, teenage muggings and other events are occurring with frightening regularity and increasing frequency. It reviews several published articles addressing this subject and examines such issues as the different reactions of girls and boys to violence and the desensitization to violence through prolonged television viewing.
“Violence on television is something that the world has slowly backed into. At one time violence on television was limited to gun fights on westerns which were portrayed in an unrealistic manner(Hough, 1997). More recently the violence on television and film has become based in reality. Shows such as cops, American’s Most Wanted and others bring violence into the living room and remind the world that it is out there. With the piping in of such shows it drives home the fact that nobody is really safe from random attacks.”