The Effects Of Violence In Tel Essay

The Effects Of Violence In Tel Essay, Research Paper The Effects of Violence in Television and Movies “Violence on television and in the movies is damaging to children” (Levine) Well, that just about says it all, huh? Or does it? One thing is for certain, the link between adolescent violence and the programs on television is there, the only thing to debate is how strong is that link? Many people feel there is a huge problem with the violence on television and in the movies in today’s society, causing all sorts of social chaos, such as school shootings, massacres, and just about anything else you can thing of. On the other hand, many people feel less strongly about the topic. They feel that violence on television and in the movies is a problem, but not as big a problem

as most others make it out to be. But wait, there’s more. There is one last group; the targeted demographic. The people who actually watch the shows everyday. They, of course, couldn’t care less about what they watch. These people can sit through anything basically. If you do care, you’re in one of the other aforementioned groups. So, we have three groups, all with varying opinions and ideas. Surprisingly, violence on network television has Moran 2 been declining steadily over the past three years, according to a report released in January by the Center for Communication Policy at the University of California at Los Angeles (Moret). Also, public perception, largely the result of media emphasis, is that almost half of all violent crime is committed by juveniles; when in

fact, it’s only 19% (Moret). Yes, that’s still a lot, but while many people think that the juvenile crime rate has gone up dramatically, it has always stayed at around 20% for more than one hundred years (Moret). After a terrifying spike beginning in the 80s, the murder rate among young people declined 31% between 1993 and 1996, according to the National Center for Juvenile Justice (Marks). We’d like to think this is getting better, but we really can’t know for sure. So, we have three groups, all with very different opinions. We’ll start with the most concerned, the ones who think that all violent television and movies are horribly immoral and should be banned. This group believes that any program with violence is unsuitable for viewing by the younger demographic, that

it will affect them in the long run. Statistics show, that yes, it does affect younger children. Impressionism starts when a child is very young (Elias), so it would make sense that they feel that young children should not watch violent programs. It would seem, and again studies show, Moran 3 that the older one gets, the less likely you are to be influenced by a movie or television program, because older people obviously know it’s wrong to hurt someone. This particular group understands that, and I applaud them for it. They feel a solution to this very serious problem is to simply not let children watch it (Levine). That is, a blocking system, like the V-chip. Also, they are vying for a more tight watch at movie theaters, making sure that children do not even have a chance to

see R rated movies, not even if their parents say they can.The second group feels that the issue at hand is not as serious as the first group. They believe that yes, violence influenced by children is a problem, but not life threatening. Many studies of television related violence have determined that adolescent children are not as impressionable as the younger group aforementioned, and the effects are less, but they are still there. For example, one study showed that adolescents have more aggressive feelings when they watch violent movies, but “….people may walk out of a movie such as Natural Born Killer feeling aggressive, but unless they keep replaying the movie, or other angry thoughts associated with the movie in their mind, they are apt to be back to normal in a few