Crime and Violence essays

Crime and Violence essays Crime and Violence in television has been an issue since the beginning of popular media. Many people think that a lot of Crime and Violence go hand in hand with shows and movies seen on television. The section of the paper will discuss TV violence and how it effects young viewers. American children watch an average of three to fours hours of television daily. Television can be a powerful influence in developing value systems and shaping behavior. Unfortunately, much of today's television programming is violent. Hundreds of studies of the effects of TV violence on children and teenagers have found that children may: Become "immune" to the horror of violence; Gradually accept violence as a way to solve problems; Imitate the violence they observe on television; and Identify with certain characters, victims and/or victimizers Children follow what they see done. If they see something done on TV portrayed in a good light, or at least in a way that is not very detrimental, then they feel like it may be a good thing. If they respect the person or people in what they see, then they would want to emulate them. This can be good, if children are not barraged with violent act after violent act. According to an American Psychological Association task force report on television and American society (Huston, et al., 1992), by the time the average child leaves elementary school, he or she will have witnessed at least 8,000 murders and more than 100,000 other assorted acts of violence on television. Studies have been done to show that children that watch violent shows are more likely to behave violent in their adult life than without violent shows. Children that watch these shows are unable to distinguish right from wrong in real life when comparing it to a world where the rules of real life do not fully apply. The differences between the real and the fictional are hard for a young child to see, ...