Impact of Television Violence:

Violence on television affects children negatively, according to psychological research.

The three major effects of seeing violence on television are:

• Children may become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others.
• Children may be more fearful of the world around them.
• Children may be more likely to behave in aggressive ways toward others.

Studies have shown that children's television contain about 20 violent acts each hour and that children who watch a lot of television are more likely to think that the world is a mean and dangerous place.

Children often behave differently after they've been watching violent programs on television. In one study done at Pennsylvania State University, about 100 preschool children were observed both before and after watching television; some watched cartoons that had many aggressive and violent acts; others watched shows that didn't have any kind of violence. The researchers noticed real differences between the kids who watched the violent shows and those who watched nonviolent ones.

Children who watched the violent shows were more likely to strike out at playmates, argue, disobey authority and were less willing to wait for things than those children who watched nonviolent programs.

Field studies by Leonard Eron, Ph.D. and his associates at the University of Illinois, 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 became teenagers. By observing these youngsters until they were 30 years old, Dr. Eron found that the ones who'd watched a lot of television when they were eight years old were more likely to be arrested and prosecuted for criminal acts as adults.

Questionable Influences:

For most of television's early years, it was difficult to find role models who would inspire young girls in the viewing audience.

In the mid-1970s, a new genre of programs such as "Charlie's Angels," "Wonder Woman," and "The Bionic Woman" entered the scene.

Now, there were females on television who were in control, aggressive and were not dependent upon males for their success.

Conventional wisdom might suggest this phenomena would have a positive impact on younger female viewers. But, a recent study by L. Rowell Huesmann, Ph.D. -- a psychologist at the Aggression Research Group at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research -- refutes that premise.

Huesmann's research states that young girls who often watched shows featuring aggressive heroines in the 1970s have grown up to be more aggressive adults involved in more confrontations, shoving matches, chokings and knife fights than women who had watched few or none of these shows.

One example cited by Huesmann is that 59 percent of those who watched an above-average amount of violence on television as children were involved in more than the average number of such aggressive incidents later in life.

Huesmann says that ages six to eight are very delicate and critical years in the development of children. Youngsters are learning "scripts" for social behavior that will last them throughout their life.

Huesmann found those "scripts" didn't always have happy endings.

In the onset of his research -- which took place between 1977 and 1979 -- Huesmann asked 384 girls in the first through fifth-grades in Oak Park, Ill. about their viewing habits.

In his follow-up between 1992 and 1995, he tracked down 221 of the original subjects and collected information on their life histories. Huesmann had subjects enter responses into a computer and as an accuracy check, Huesmann got information about each subject from a close friend or spouse.