Television Violence

    One of the factors that is getting the blame for teen's violent behavior is the violence they watch on television. There have been many studies looking into whether there is a link between teens acting violent and watching violence on television.

    Most studies just looked at the violent content of TV, but the following study looked at the behavior of the children that watched the show. In this study they took a survey of every 8 year old in a typical American town in 1960. Later they took the same survey of the same children in 1971, 1981 and 1994. The correlation between violence-viewing at age 8 and how aggressive they were at 19 was higher then the correlation between watching violence at age 8 and act aggressive at age 8.   

    Over the years TV has changed to reflect the times. Media violence has increased in quantity and has become much more graphic, sexual, and is more sadistic. Violence is sort of like the nicotine in cigarettes, the media has to pump more violence into shows because people have built up a tolerance. To get the same interest, they need ever higher levels of violence to be entertained.

    If a parent is worried about what their children are watching on TV and wants to do something about it, there is a thing called a V-Chip. The V-Chip is built into all TVs sold since January, 2000. It is a system that allows parents to block violent programs so their children can't watch them and act violent. The current V-Chip was developed by an engineer named Tim Collings. The current v-chip system is rated by your age: