Violence

Although our society is fighting against all the means of violence, television companies constantly put more and more children cartoons with heavy violent background into their programs what effects the behavior of children in a negative way.

When E.B.White in 1939 introduced a television for the first time to the public, he probably did not figure out that television would have such an impact on our society. In 1949, only two percent of homes had television. However, today only two percent of homes exist without it. If we would compare our society with the one that was one hundred years ago we would find many differences. The most marked would be the increase of the violence in those days and today. Before the fairy tales read by parents encouraged development of child's imagination and there was usually and opportunity to talk about what happened in the story, today's watching television is a passive activity that is usually done without the parent explanation and everything is left to the children's own explanation and their own understanding.

In addition, television viewing is certainly different today than it was 30 years ago. Children of today have without a doubt far more television programs available while parents are extremely busy and therefore spent lesser time with their own children than the parents did in 1970s. The most interesting and strongest relationship between television viewing is at the age of 8 and aggressive behavior at the age of 18. For instance, the research at the University of Illinois done by Leonard Eron, Ph.D., found that children who watched many hours of television violence when they were in elementary school tended to also show a higher level of aggressive behavior when they become teenagers. The children who watched a lot of television when they were eight years old were more likely to be involved in fights, conflicts, delinquency and arrested and prosecuted for criminal acts as adults.

In average, children watch 28 hours of television per week. By the time the average child reaches the age of 12, he or she has witnessed over 8,000 murders. Children's television programs actually contain five times more violence than the average prime time hour of television. Elaine Landau says: "A typical war cartoon shows in average 41 acts of violence per hour, with an attempted murder every two minutes!" Evidently more aggressive children watch more violent television and actually prefer more violent television than their less aggressive friends. Since the children are visual learners, they repeat both positive and negative behavior they see. When the children watch the superheroes beating the villains with violence, they learn that fighting is the only right method of solving the conflict. In fact, the conflicts in real life are never solved by fighting but in agreement, which is discussion or analyzing of the problem that these youth viewers were not shown and, we can say, they do not know about such a way of solution.
Furthermore, psychological research shows (National Institute of Mental Health, 1982) three major effects of violence on television:
oChildren may become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others
oChildren may be more fearful of the world around them
oChildren may be more likely to behave in aggressive or harmful ways towards the others.

Evidently, children become immune to the horror of violence, gradually accept violence as a way to solve problem, imitate violence they observe on television, and identify with certain characters, victims, or victimizers (American, 1).

For all that is shown above, it is obvious that the harmful effects of television violence do exist. Proof of this can be again found in a city of Notel, Canada, in which television was introduced in 1973. There was a 160% increase in shoving, pushing, biting and hitting among young children. (Goodwin, 48). When the television arrived in South Africa, the murder rate among whites that was in the decline increased 130 percent in twelve years. (Goodwin, 49). When the children eat and drink while watching, the violence becomes a part of their life. Let's use as an example an animated cartoon "South Park", which shows four children who swear all the time and get involved in thousands of acts of violence. One character dies at the end of each episode, but is again alive in the following one. This cartoon show follows the footsteps of "Beavis and Butthead". They both have negative effect on their young viewers. Similar cartoon to these can be the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Batman, Superman cartoons, Pocemon or, the newest one, Harry Potter. Children usually consider every cartoon to be suitable for watching and do not consider it as something to be watched and understood only by the adult viewers just because they recognize it as a cartoon show. The boundary between fantasy and reality that adults can distinguish is much more difficult for children to be recognized.

Absolutely the worst of all is when young children commit a crime such a murder. These children do not recognize it as something bad but as something adventurous, thrilling, cool and exciting. The rate of these victims increases mostly in the U.S.A. Evidence of this show Barry Loukaitis, who being 14 killed a teacher and two classmates in 1996. He loved the film Natural Born Killers and identified himself with the kid in Pearl Jam's rock video "Jeremy" who went to school to kill others and then himself. Another example can be two boys who killed the mother of one of the boys stabbing her 45 times. They admitted that they had been inspired by the teenage movie Scream. One of them told to a friend that the slayings in the movie were 'cool' and that 'it was the perfect way to kill someone'. We could continue in showing such a horrible instances that happened also in the near past but would not it be better to focus more attention to children's needs, to help them to find the true values of life, to teach them to talk about the problems and to solve them in discussion instead of in fight? The main role is laid on the parents

To sum up, television violence is very common today than it was 30 years ago. In the times when the fairy tales were read by parents, it encouraged development of child's imagination and it usually gave opportunity to talk about what happened in the story. Today's watching television is a passive activity that is usually done without the parent explanation and everything is left to the children's own explanation and their own way of understanding. The rate of its young viewers increases a great deal accordingly with a bad effect on viewers' attitudes, knowledge, interests sequences, which are felt now, in our society. All this is mostly caused because of the television companies that constantly put cartoons with heavy violent background into their programs. They should consider their harmful effect to the children.