Violence behaviour in a human being is not a random outburst. It is nurtured in that person since the early years of his or her life. The reason for developing this anti-social attitude could be varying. The most common and unavoidable source is television.
We are all aware of the fact that what we see stays in our memory for a longer time than something that is heard or read.
This means it is not very hard for a child to learn the techniques of violence that appear at the time he prefers to watch TV. It should be surprising to know that your child witnesses about 8000 murders and 100,000 other acts of violence even before he can start going to Kinder Garden.
This makes it obvious that by the time a child reaches his/her 18th year of life he/she would have witnessed as many as 40,000 murders and 800,000 acts of violence.
You cannot stop your kid from watching TV, can you? So we are in a situation so unfortunate that with each passing hour we have increased appearances of violent acts. It would not be out of place here to compare the violence on TV in the years 1998 and 2006.
The violence in the 8 pm shows has increased up to 45.3 percent from 1998 to 2006. Its increase in the 9 pm shows has been 92.1 percent during the same period. The 10 pm shows have had an unimaginable increase in violence which has reached up to 167 percent again during the same period.
The effect of violence on TV on an average kid has been demonstrated through an experiment conducted by Alert Bandura in 1961. The Bobo Doll Experiment as he calls it explains how a child imitates all that he watches on TV. The first step in the experiment was to show a kid a video in which an adult brutally attacks a Bobo doll.
Then the kid is left in a room with the Bobo doll to observe his actions. It was seen that the kid treats the Bobo doll in the exact same manner as shown in the video.
This gives us a peep into child psychology and tells us the fact that a child’s personality is like clay and can be molded at will. It is important for us to realize that violence on TV is not even remotely close to what is witnessed in reality.
The shows portray violence in a greatly exaggerated manner. For instance, the TV shows more murders than those that occur in reality. The same is the case with violent crimes. An average viewer is 200,000 times less likely to be murdered than a character on TV.
With such an effective tool in hand, I believe that the creative minds behind these shows should act more responsible. They should involve in creating something that is more social than anti-social. They must remember that their job is to entertain us and not to create and bring out the criminal in us.
When this is realized we will be moving towards a better society. This is my opinion, but don’t hesitate to let me know what’s yours!
“Does TV violence cause actual violence? Although there is a widespread belief that watching fictional violence causes people to be more violent, the rise of violence on TV and comparable real-world violence statistics over the past 20 years tell a different story. How does violence on TV affect your beliefs about violent crime?”
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