Media Violence

Media Violence

What is media violence? It is violence on TV, in movies, on video games, and in music. With the youth spending so much time these days watching and listening to the violence it has a dramatic affect on them. It has been proven that violence on the media is bad, it has been linked to school shootings, fights and other acts of violence.

When the TV was released in 1950 only 10% of American households had TV’s, by 1960 over 90% of them had televisions. Today 99% of households have TV’s 66% of them have 2 or more. In fact more households have a TV then a telephone (BabyBag1). With that much TV being watched violence has increased exponentially. In 1950 the US population was 150 million and there were 6280 homicides, in 1980 the population was 220 million a 47% increase the homicides were 23000 a 400% increase (groves2). Violent shows are sold to networks for a cheaper so they use them more. When the TV show NYPD blue first aired they had trouble finding advertisers willing to have there product associated with such a violent show, but now only the largest advertisers who spend the most money can get on NYPD blue. The violence on network TV is declining it used to be 51% of all shows on broadcast networks in prime time television shows were violent, now it is 23%. Sounds better? Not really, The violence has just migrated over too cable television. The violence on cable is 2/3 of all shows are violent (Hamilton).

The problem is that children are watching these programs mostly by themselves or with friends, not family. 55% of children are watching television at 8 o’clock by them selves (Hamilton). The average child will witness 200,000 acts of violence and over 16,000 murders on television and movies alone. This violence on TV is portrayed without real life consequences and is frequently rewarded. If children see these acts of violence on TV and there are no consequences and they are likely to imitate. Younger children may be frightened by the violent acts on violent TV, but even children’s shows are violent. 46% of children’s programming contains violence, 67% of that is displayed as humorous when violence occurs to someone or something. They have tried numerous things to try and stop children from watching violent shows and movies like the put rating on them like NC-17 or R but these rating increased boys interest in the shows. Violent movie are another problem they show violence usually more intense than TV shows yet they are played at prime time. These violent movies are mostly tasteless time fillers networks use to gain advertisers money and