Violence on Television

The average American child watches 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence

before finishing elementary school. That is not surprising considering the average child

is watching 27 hours of television each week, and in the inner-city children watch up to

eleven hours per day. Twenty-five percent of prime time shows in the fall of 1992

contained highly violent material, and the US homicide rate is rising fast- six times faster

than the population(CQ Researcher, 167). "There has never been a situation like this,"

says George Gerbner. A Times Mirror poll held in March of 1992 showed 72% of

Americans think there is definitely excessive violence on TV and a 1990 Gallop poll

found 63% agree television programs that depict crime and violence actually encourage

it(CQ Researcher,167-8). Television also causes the viewer to be in a "hypnotic" state so

they don't respond to anything happening around them. TV blurs an individual's

perception of reality and TV violence affects society and induces violence and crimes.

Television creates a blur of reality. "Television is greatly criticized for failing to

provide a complete, unbiased picture of reality" (Encarta) While one

. . .
"Between 1950 and 1975, TV household use increased from four

hours, twenty-five minutes per day to six hours and eight minutes per day" (Winn, 69). This is because television places

images into our brains (Mander, 216). While a person is watching the TV screen, their eyes stop seeking out

information. "Television is a lot like hypnosis;

you create a new focus, stop outside focuses, cut down all diversions, stay quiet and still

and eventually the viewer will be in a hypnotic state" (Mander, 195). Some crimes

children have committed: " Ten and twelve year old muggers preying on the elderly,

casually torturing and murdering their helpless victims, youths assailing a bicyclist in a

park and beating him to death with a chain before escaping with his bike, kids breaking

into an apartment and stomping an elderly man or drowning a woman in her bathtub"

(Winn, 73).

TV violence also affects the sensitivity towards violence in children. After watching television

nonstop for long hours, a person ceases to respond to anything.

People also believe television is real. It literally stops the critical mind (Mander, 197). The problem is that children don't learn how to commit violence from watching

violence on TV, (but perhaps sometimes they do) but the TV teaches them to deal with

real people if they were on a television screen" (Winn, 73, 74). In 1975, the National PTA demanded that networks and

local TV stations reduce the amount of violence in shows and commercials (CQ

Researcher, 175). "The image held in our mind produces physiological as well as

psychological reactions. It has

physical character" (Mander, 222).

More than 3,000 studies in the past 40 years have been done to prove the link

between violence in TV and real violence.

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Approximate Word count = 1709
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

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