Derek Wong

TV Violence

Research Paper

The Cerebral Assassin

Today kids watch on average 36-37 hours of television per week. There is also on average a 36% increase in the juvenile crime rate throughout the United States (Comstock and Paik 38). More and more we see kids resorting to guns, drugs, and other lethal outlets to deal with their personal situations such as conflicts with peers, family and school issues. According to the Aspen Institute's Children's Policy Forum Children and Violence Conference, "Youth violence has become more lethal resulting in serious injury or death. The increased lethality is explained almost entirely by the increased use of handguns in these violent exchanges," and "since 1988, there has been a dramatic increase in adolescent homicide rates." This paper will focus on how violence on television significantly contributes to the raise in the number of violent acts committed by youths.

Violence is a problem in that it is a major public health concern. Violence imposes many different kinds of losses both on victims and on society. Violent crime can induce fear, anxiety, and restriction of activities, such as not going out at night. Victims of violent crimes often suffer physically ranging from minor to serious injury to permanent disability to death as well as emotional and psychological problems, such as feeling confined and being a slave to their own homes. Because of victimization, victims may require medical and mental health care, lose time from work or school, be unable to carry out routine personal and household tasks, and suffer pain and diminished quality of life. A violent act is considered any act that may or does causes harm to another, or to oneself. Violent acts may include, but not limited to, shootings, stabbing, assault, reckless driving, and "backyard wrestling."

Children watch an excess of television. Approximately 25% of children watch from 4 to 11 hours of television daily. American children spend an average of 4 hours of television a day, 28 hours per week watching TV; by age 18 they have watched 22,000 hours of TV--more time than they spend in the classroom. The result is a generation of media savvy, if not media weary kids (Wright 835).

When today's parents were kids, the media options were served from a limited plate: Kookla, Fran, and Ollie and My Three Sons, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, occasional Saturday matinees, and a serialized radio show or two. For the most part, these amusements functioned as entertaining, yet manageable punctuation in the lives of children and youth. Fast-forward to the late 1990's where kids are constantly bombarded with an almost an infinite amount of media options. Network, cable, and satellite television, web sites, internet chat rooms, MTV, WebTV, Sega Genesis, Nintendo, CD-ROMs, books, magazines, and e-mail constitute more than just punctuations in the lives of children today; they are a central substance and presence (Huesmann 748).

There is an increase in the violence in television programs. Sixty seven percent of prime time network television now contains violence with ninety-two percent of premium cable shows containing violence. In fact, there has been a twelve percent increase in the violence shown on network television("Television"). Each hour in children’s TV shows about 20 violent acts alone. To give you an idea, according to an American Psychological Association task force report on television and American society, by the time the average child (i.e., one who watches two to four hours of television daily) 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. By age eighteen, they would have seen over 200,000 murders (Huston, et al., 1992).

Television sends out a message that to resolve your conflicts, anger, or frustrations there are two ways. The first is to express your anger in a violent way that is not directed to the individual. An example is to punch a punching bag, a pillow, or perhaps even the wall. The second is to use violence to achieve the end result, resolution of the matter. If you have a problem with someone, resorting to violence is being taught as the most effective and should be the first choice used. Popular television shows show that the hero has to resort to some sort of violence in order to subdue the villain. This could be kicking, and punching, or shooting and blowing up the villain. The message that is sent is that the value of utilitarianism, where it is taught that only the end results matter and that the methods used to attain these results do not matter, should supercede the value of using non-violent methods.

According to a recent article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Bushman 367), people who read or are told a catharsis message, are likely to be more aggressive. The Catharsis theory is the idea that if you hit a punching bag when you are angry, you are relieving or purging your anger and thus you will be more psychologically healthy. It is thought that if do not express your anger, frustrations and "negative emotions" through these ways, then your anger will build and you will "explode." However, recent evidence shows that venting out anger through a violent means actually perpetuates anger and actually increases the aggressiveness of an individual.

An example of a pro-catharsis message is: "Punch a pillow or a punching bag. And while you do it, yell and curse and moan and holler .... Punch with all the frenzy you can. If you are angry at a particular person, imagine his or her face on the pillow or punching bag, and vent your rage physically and verbally. You will be doing violence to a pillow or punching bag so that you can stop doing violence to yourself by holding in poisonous anger. You are not hitting a person. You are hitting the ghost of that person-a ghost from the past, a ghost alive in you that must be exorcised in a concrete, physical way." John Lee, Facing the Fire: Expressing and Experiencing Anger Appropriately

After hitting a punching bag, or" relieving your anger," you are still very susceptible to be angry and you might transfer your anger to other people or other objects. For example, you may be angry with person A, but you will most likely show the same aggression to person B, person C, etc. Or perhaps you will take out your anger on non-animated objects by punching the wall, hitting the computer. According to the study performed by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the procatharsis message led to an increased aggressive behavior across the board, and people made no meaningful distinction between the punching bag, the person who had provoked them, and an innocent third person as aggressive target. This study confirmed that people who did not hit the punching bag when they were angry were actually less, not more, aggressive than people who hit the punching bag. Here, hitting the punching bag led to subsequently higher levels of aggression, even among participants who had been led to believe in the catharsis hypothesis.

If children are taught that when you are angry, it is okay to be violent, then children will resort to violent deeds. However, it has been proven that although children may act out these violent deeds, they still do not feel relieved from the situation and feel that they must continue to act violently in order to release their anger. This is a futile attempt because the more they act out their frustrations through violent means, the more their angered is sustained, if not increased, and the more the cycle of violence will continue to revolve.

Lets look at some examples. The first is Jerry Springer. Like most talk show programs, the Jerry Springer show, attempts to solve the personal problems of their guests. When guests find out why they are on the show, generally because they were cheated on in some way, they come out with their fists swinging. The audience enthusiastically chants "Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!" to encourage the mock fighting. There is little time to talk out the conflict, and at almost every instant the guests will find whatever reason to take another swing at each other. No matter what the outcome is, guests will try to get in that "last punch," and the crowds always cheer for it. What type of example is this? Kids today are given the impression that if adults can only settle their difference by fighting and swearing at each other. At the end of each show, the conflict is still there, if not magnified, there is no resolution or closure on the matter at hand, and the guests end up more miserable than before.

I am sure as kids, we all had our favorite hero show. I know mine’s was Batman. To me he was the "coolest." Although he possessed no super power, he was still someone to be reckoned with. With his gadget-filled belt, and his super-fast batmobile he was unstoppable. I know that many kids wished they were just like him and acted out his moves. When there was a bad guy, you would use your weapons and chop him down to size. If you couldn’t then you would somehow get a bigger and better and more powerful weapon. In either case to bring down a bad guy, you should whatever means possible. This is exactly the type of message that kids should not be getting. Children are conditioned to resolve conflicts by first resorting to violence. I agree that having Batman, or Superman, to sit down and negotiate would be a boring cartoon, but our children should learn that resorting to violence as their first option is not the best way to handle conflicts. Regardless of the outcome, violence should not be seen as the first avenue to be used when resolving a conflict.

A very popular show that uses violence to settle almost, if not all, their conflicts is the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). This show is structured like a soap opera with each character having conflicts with one another. They resolve their conflicts by resorting to violence. The wrestlers would either call their enemies out to the ring to battle it out or they would surprise attack them. The fallen wrestler would then use more force in retaliation escalating the conflict to the point where someone is "busted open" and left in a pool of their own blood. To add to the conflicts, there are championships within the WWF. The most desired of the championships is the Heavy-weight title, or the WWF Championship. It is shown that wrestlers should do whatever it takes to get that title and beat-up and "screw" whoever they need to attain it. Several plots used throughout the show to eliminate the competition was running over the wrestler competing for the championship with a car, burning the individual, and currently using steel chairs to attack from behind. It is clear that the theme of the show is to use violence as your way to assassinate your problems.

Children have a tendency to imitate what they see on television, and with so much exposure to television violence, a significant correlation was demonstrated linking violence exposure, lack of parental monitoring, and television-viewing habits with children's violent behaviors within a diverse sample of elementary and middle school students. To add to this it has been proposed that there is a sensitive period between ages 8 and 12 during which children are particularly susceptible to the influence of television violence (Eron & Huesmann, 64).

Backyard wrestling is just one of the newest ways youths are imitating what they see on television. Similar to the World Wrestling Federation, and other professional fighting shows, the kids battle it out with each other by doing a wide range of stunts. Some of these stunts are jumping, throwing, and landing on your opponent, throwing "fake punches", crashing through wooden tables, and using an entire arsenal of weapons to onslaught pain such as barbed wires, steel chairs, and trash cans. The results are pools of blood, numerous broken bones, sometimes paralysis and at times death.

The imitation is real and last year one innocent boy killed his baby brother through imitation. On June 1st 2000, a 7-year-old North Dallas boy emulating a pro wrestling move he learned from television accidentally killed his 3-year-old brother. He was imitating the wrestling move called a "clothesline." When asked to demonstrate the move on a doll about the size of his 3-year old brother, the seven-year old boy backed up about 10 feet and ran toward a police detective who was holding up the doll. "As he neared the doll, the boy thrust one arm out at shoulder level and forcefully struck the doll at its neck, knocking it backward," Detective Dan Lesher said in the Dallas Morning News (Anderson). It is obvious here that the seven year old did not know and better, did not want to intentionally hurt his little brother, and just wanted wrestle with him, however nothing can be done now to bring his brother back to life. However, it should be pointed out that this is not an isolated incident. There are thousands of children imitating wrestling moves, and hurting themselves as well as others because they fail to realize the true way that each move is to be executed. For example, a 10-year old in Kentucky was almost paralyzed when his friend tried to piledrive him, causing his spinal cord and neck to be compressed. The friend didn't realize that when the professionals perform the piledriver, the head of the person being piledrived never actually touches the floor (Anderson).

Newton’s Third Law of Physics said it best, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Here, for every violent act on television, our kids suffer severe consequences. According to the American Psychological Association, decades of psychological research have shown that violence on TV may make children less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others, more fearful of the world around them, and more likely to behave in aggressive and harmful ways toward others. In studies on related topics, children themselves have reported that TV makes them think that people are dishonest, selfish, and care more about money than other people. They also confess that TV encourages them to talk back to parents. (Jason) "Its effects are measurable and long-lasting," according to a joint statement by the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. "Moreover, prolonged viewing of media violence can lead to emotional desensitization toward violence in real life." (Associated Press)

At this time, well over 1000 studies – including reports from the Surgeon General’s office, the National Institute of Mental Health, and numerous studies conducted by leading figures within our medical and public health organizations – our own members – point overwhelmingly to a causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in some children. The conclusion of the public health community, based on over 30 years of research, is that viewing entertainment violence can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values and behavior, particularly in children. (American Medical Association)

What can be done about it? According to PreventViolence.org, there are several solutions to help deal with juvenile violence:

- Creating job training and entrepreneurial programs that give youth hope for the future

- Providing at-risk youth with caring role models and mentors

- Organizing supervised recreation programs in neighborhood parks

- Keeping schools open later to provide a safe haven for youth

- Increasing participation in violence prevention and volunteer programs that emphasize responsibility and accountability

In the end it is up to all members of society to help secure our future and to realize the magnitude that television has on our lives. With every television set exposing our children to more and more violent and malicious act, we are allowing our future to fall victim to the cerebral assassin.

Works Cited

American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Child &Adolescent Psychiatry. Joint Statement on The Impact of Entertainment Violence on Children Congressional Public Health Summit. 26 July 2000. 4 May 2001 <http://www.lionlamb.org/jointstatement.htm>

Anderson, Kendall. "Sibling's wrestling move killed N. Dallas boy, 3" The Dallas Morning News 7 July 2000: D-FW

Associated Press. "The Mind of Babes." ABC News 26 July 2000. 4 May 2001. < http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/dailynews/violence000726.html >

Bushman, Brad J., Stack, Angela D. "Catharsis, Aggression, and Persuasiveness. Self-fulling or Self-defeating prophecy?" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 6 (January 1999) 337-387

Comstock, G. & Paik, H. (1991). Televsion and the American Child. San Diego, CA: Academic.

Eron, L. D. & Huesmann, L. R. (1986). The role of television in the development of prosocial and antisocial behavior. In D. Olweus, J. Block, & M. Radke-Yarrow (eds.), The Development of Antisocial and Prosocial Behavhior: Research, Theories, and Issues.

New York: Academic.

Huesmann, L. R., Lagerspetz, K., & Eron, L. D. (1984). "Intervening variables in the TV violence-aggression relation: Evidence from two countries." Developmental Psychology, 5, 1992. Page 20

Huston, A. C., Donnerstein, E., Fairchild, H., Fashbach, N. D., Katz, P. A., Murray, J. P., Rubinstein, E. A., Wilcox, B. L., Zuckerman, D., (1992). Big World, Small Screen: The Role of Television in American Society. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska.

Jason, Leonard A. PhD. Helping Children Responsibly Watch TV and Other Media. March 2000. 4 May 2001. < http://www.depaul.edu/~ljason/TVPresen/ >

Prevent Violence.org. 1997. PreventViolence.org. 4 May 2001. <preventviolence.org>

Television Alliance. 20 March 1999. West Central Community Center. 3 May 2001. < http://www.tvalliance.org/townforum.htm>

Wright, J. C. & Huston, A. C. (1983). A matter of form: Potentials of television for young viewers. American Psychologist, 38, 835- 43.