What impact does television viewing have on child and adolescent behavior? The pervasiveness of television and its increasingly violent content have led many to believe that it imperils the healthy emotional development of children and adolescents. Exposure to television is not always negative, however, so we need to critically examine its effects on children to develop a more balanced approach.
How Much TV? How Much TV Violence?
In 1950, only 10 percent of homes in the United States had TVs, but by 1996, approximately 99 percent of U.S. homes had TVs, about 54 percent of children had TV sets in their bedrooms, and children spent an average of 28 hours per week watching TV. Clearly, watching TV is a major part of children's lives in the United States.
Violent and aggressive actions also appear more often during prime time, and children in the United States now witness more violence on TV than ever before. After examining more than 10,000 hours of TV programming between 1994 and 1997, the National Television Violence Study (Mediascope, cited in Beresin, 1999) concluded that young people view about 10,000 “acts of violence” per year. More than half of all TV programs have violent content. In addition, “attractive perpetrators” commit about 38 percent of the violence, and more than half of these violent acts are accompanied by neither pain nor remorse. Comstock and Strashurger (cited in Beresin, 1999) suggest that children's programming contains about 20 violent scenes per hour compared to an average of 8–12 scenes per hour in all programming. These numbers, however, include the “violent acts” that occur in cartoons, and whether the obvious unreality of cartoons protects children from exposure to violence has yet to be examined rigorously.
The proliferation of TV and TV vio-lence has led many to blame TV viewing for such problems as juvenile obesity, poor communication within families, and aggressive behavior by children and adolescents.
Is There a Causal Relationship?
Increasingly, professional organizations have issued advice on how to deal with the potentially damaging effects of violent programming on young people. The American Academy of Pediatrics, for example, suggests that children watch no more than 1 to 2 hours per day and that parents watch programs with their children both to monitor content and to generate discussion and communication. The American Psychological Association has recommended a rating system similar to the motion picture system to assist parents in choosing appropriate TV programming for their children. These recommendations stem from a growing body of research suggesting that violent and risk-taking behavior increases among young people who frequently watch television.
For example, Centervall (1992) documented a greater than 90 percent increase in the homicide rate for the United States and Canada between 1945, when television was first introduced in North America, and 1974. Although the reasons for this increase are complex, many researchers have documented a 10- to 15-year time lag between TV viewing and the emergence of violent behavior and believe that it represents a consistent connection between seeing violence on TV and becoming old enough to act out what one has seen.
Some researchers have examined the general increase in risk-taking behavior that follows TV viewing. For example, Klein and colleagues (1993) examined increases in sexual intercourse, drinking, smoking cigarettes and marijuana, cheating, stealing, cutting class, and driving a car without permission among 2,760 randomly selected 14- to 16-year-olds from 10 urban areas. For all the young people surveyed, these behaviors correlated with frequency of TV viewing, even when such variables as race, gender, and parental education were accounted for.
Finally, a growing body of data suggests that children who witness either fictional or real violence on TV sometimes develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Joshi and Kaschak (1998) found that 10 percent of 702 high school students sought counseling for negative reactions to TV violence, citing such problems as nightmares, anxiety, fear of being alone, and school absences.
The argument against TV viewing appears compelling. These studies are complex, however, and we need more research to better delineate whether TV viewing merely correlates with or actually causes violent behavior. Perhaps most important, many critics of television fail to mention the positive benefits of some of the same TV content.
The Flip Side
Through the stories that appear on television—and in literature and movies—adults can develop an alliance with students and their concerns. For adolescents, delving into their own psyches is often too threatening and uncomfortable, but they will eagerly embrace the tribulations of a Dawson's Creek relationship, an NYPD Blue trauma, or a Buffy the Vampire Slayer horror (Schlozman, 2000).
A more balanced approach to media should involve a careful discussion with young viewers about what they value in the characters and plots of the programs that they enjoy. Aggressive feelings are, after all, part of being human, and if we censor TV programming without understanding its potential value, we suggest to young people that their feelings are wrong and inappropriate. Adults should remember to consider content in terms of its developmental appeal and appropriateness. A 5-year-old should probably never watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, although most teenagers will be fine.
Consider the following well-known passage from Homer's Odyssey that appears in many 9th grade curriculums:But Odysseus aimed and shot Antinous square in the throat and the point went stabbing clean through the soft neck and out—and off to the side he pitched, the cup dropped from his grasp.
Few would suggest that Homer's epic be struck from the canon for its violent content, and were a decent movie version available, millions of 14-year-olds would watch the story. Yet here are violence and revenge and carnage at their worst. What makes the Odyssey acceptable is the extent to which students understand the story, with the help of their mentors, in terms of the larger context of Odysseus's plight. At age 14, students can begin to understand Odysseus's strengths and his weaknesses; that is, they are developmentally primed to appreciate the story's complexities.
Knee-jerk censorship is too easy and potentially damaging (Jellinek, 2001). Better access to mental health care and improving the quality of safety in schools will be a more effective, albeit less politically expedient, method of curtailing youth violence than simply forbidding access to media. Beresin (1999) is investigating the ways that all forms of media can have positive effects on children and adolescents (seewww.mentalhealthandmedia.org).
As with all controversial subjects, the answer most likely lies somewhere in the middle. If teachers and parents are too quick to censor, then they lose an opportunity to understand the children whom they are charged with teaching and rearing. By staying involved with a child's world and conveying our interest, we can monitor media in terms of content and analysis, maintaining our alliance and provoking discussion. What better way to help with the development of our youth?
