THE EFFECTS OF MEDIA VIOLNCE ON CHILDREN
On April 20 1999 two boys by the names of Dylan Klebold and
Eric Harris walked into their High school in the little town of Colombine Colorado
and opened fire on their fellow classmates.Some say it was the parents others say
just pure teen adolescence, I say it was the media.
In the 1950's Television was first introduced to America, only
ten percent of the families owned a one television in their home, by 1960 that
number increased to a mere 90% of the people owning a TV, but now a whopping
99% of homes in our country own a TV. 54% of chidren have one in their own
room.
Television has become so much of a part of are existense that it
is virtually impossible to imagine life without it. We all love TV. We can't help
ourselves. But the question is what is TV doing to us?, and how much is too much?
Children begin to react to television at a very early age, studies
show that by the age of three, 95% of children will imitate someone on TV as they
would a real live person, and children between the ages of six and ten believe that
most of what they see on television is true life.
Children learn more about life through the media than any
other matter. It is said that the average child, from the ages of three to twelve will
watch a minimum of 28 hours of TV a week, meaning children spend more time in
front of the so called "Boob Tube" then they do in the classroom. This makes them
very vulnerable to the effects that television causes.
The average child will witness over 200,000 thousand acts of
violence on television including 16,000 acts of murder in his lifetime. Violence in the
media leads many children to become very aggressive, by watching aggresson
children learn
how to become aggressive, and they also bel...