Dispatch Television Critic

July 14, 1997

Television is under attack -- and many groups are joining forces against it.

The heavy artillery is aimed at the content of programs, at the amount and degree of sex, violence and profane language in prime-time series.

The debate culminated earlier this year in a voluntary, age-based ratings system to which content judgements soon will be added.

While commercial stations have agreed to air at least three hours of educational programming a week beginning in September, the real battle is being fought elsewhere -- not over the small strip of turf designated as children's television but over the bigger, more lucrative beachhead of prime time.

Everyone would like to think that kids watch only Sesame Street, Shining Time Station and Animaniacs -- the good stuff, the stuff designed specifically for kids.

In fact, children watch more prime-time television than anything else -- adult-themed series such as Friends; Beverly Hills, 90210; and The Nanny. They watch more television from 8 to 9 p.m. than on Saturday mornings or on weekday afternoons, according to Nielsen Media Research.

On a typical night in the United States, 13.1 million children 17 and younger are watching prime-time shows. (The "family hour" from 8 to 9 p.m. ended in 1976 because of antitrust and First Amendment objections.)

"Repeated exposure to media violence, especially when found on television, is directly responsible for the increase in aggression and desensitisation in our children," Madeline Levine writes in Viewing Violence: How Media Violence Affects Your Child's and Adolescent's Development.

The average prime-time show, Levine charges, has five violent acts per hour; cartoons have an average of 25 per hour.

By early adolescence, she says, children have viewed more than 8,000 killings and 100,000 other violent acts on television.

Two Cleveland researchers share her concern about the effects of television on young psyches.

In a study released last month to the Ohio Department of Mental Health, Professors Mark I. Singer and David B. Miller of Case Western Reserve University reported that children in grades three through eight who watch significantly more television than their peers display the highest propensity toward psychological trauma.

That doesn't mean, however, that violence on television is causing kids to have problems, Singer said.

It may mean that kids with problems are using television as "a way to numb out, to escape," he declared. "Kids who have pre-existing depression or anxiety can literally numb themselves and make problems go away temporarily by watching large amounts of television."

Still, "both boys and girls who preferred shows with lots of action and fighting -- the high-violence programs -- had significantly higher anger scores compared with other students. They also reported more aggression toward others."

A causal link between watching violence and engaging in it is disproved by the Japanese experience, said Jack Levin, director of the Program for the Study of Violence at North-eastern University in Boston.

"There is a lot more violence on Japanese TV (than American TV) and almost no murder in the streets," he said.

The short answer to the question of whether violent television creates violent kids: Nobody knows. Despite the impassioned rhetoric of children's advocates, no one can say for sure how violent television affects a child's psyche.

"It isn't as if, if they see a violent act, they'll go out and do it," said Theresa Sadek, principal of Medary Elementary School in Columbus. "The point is that violence on television diminishes the value of life."

Sexual innuendoes raise the ire of the Parents Television Council, a conservative think tank that issues annual reports on the sexual content of network programs in the early evening. The reports count obscenities and sexual references.

Between 1995 and '97, the latest council report says, "foul language increased dramatically."

The Kaiser Family Foundation, a California advocacy group, analysed prime-time programs from the 1996-97 season and found that three of four programs had sexual content and 30 percent made sex a primary focus.

In a 1996 survey of parents nation-wide, the foundation discovered that parents are more concerned about sexual content than violence in prime-time television: Forty-three percent of parents said they worry about depictions of sexuality, while 39 percent said violence troubles them.

Sixty-eight percent acknowledged being able to join their children when they watch television only about half the time.

Children and Television Violence

John P. Murray
School of Family Studies and Human Services
Kansas State University

I first became interested in the impact of television in the late 1960's when I worked in Washington for the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General on a study of the impact of television violence on children (Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behaviour, 1972; Murray, 1973). In this report, I will use that early research as the starting point and context for considering the ways in which our society deals with the issue of television violence.

To begin at the beginning, the official starting date for television in the United States was 1939, at a World's Fair. At the time of the debut, there were mixed reactions to television because it was a little green screen with a constant flicker. There was little to watch and some thought TV would never go anywhere, while others thought it was a marvellous invention. One observer and social critic who captured this divergent view was E. B. White, who wrote in Harper's magazine in 1938: "I believe that television is going to be the test of the modern world, and in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our own vision, we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television, of that I am sure." (White, 1938, cited in Boyer, 1991, p. 79)

Well, White was right, we would either win or lose. But, most social scientists paid very little attention to television, and so we have little research available in the United States on the immediate effects of the introduction of television. But, television did not wait for the researchers to begin their studies. The first license was issued by the Federal Communications Commission on July 1, 1941, although development was held in abeyance by World War II. The first licenses were issued for commercial television stations -- I stress that these were commercial stations, not public broadcasting. This is important because television broadcasting in virtually every country in the world, except for the United States, began first as a public system -- government-owned or government-sponsored television. Television in the United States began as a commercial enterprise to sell goods and services, while providing entertainment. Only about 20 years later did public broadcasting begin as educational television and then PBS. I will contend that we began this communication medium as a vehicle for selling goods and services, not as a vehicle for informing, enlightening, or broadening horizons, and we have paid a "price" for this decision in the lack of specialised programming for children.

The first stations were licensed in 1941, but broadcasting as we think of it now did not take shape until the late 1940's. There were a few commercial networks; NBC and the DuMont Network were among the early broadcast systems. However, by the mid 1950's, we evolved the structure that we have in the commercial broadcasting system today, at least the main characteristics of it, into three broadcast networks -- NBC, ABC, CBS, to which we have now added a fourth network, FOX. Despite the slow start, broadcasting took off in the late 1940's and diffused throughout the United States in ways that no other invention ever created to date has so diffused. In 1949, only 2% of American households had TV. By 1955, 64% of American households had at least one television set. By the mid 1960's, 93% of American households had a television set. Today, there are very few people (only 2%) who do not have television. In the 1960's, the main reason for not having TV was the fact that they lived in places that could not possibly receive a television signal. That is not the case today; there is not a corner of this country, or a corner of this globe, where a television signal is not available, either by over-the-air broadcast, by cable, or by satellite direct broadcast (see Andreasen, 1990).

But, as television rapidly expanded through the population, so did concern about the effects of television. There were numerous concerns that emerged all at once: concerns about the amount of time spent with television, concerns about violence, and concerns about school performance. One of the most famous concerns that I remember, and one that still floats in mythology, was the concern about television's effect on eyesight. I can remember my mother saying, "Don't sit so close to that television, it's going to ruin your eyesight." And, mothers and fathers still say that today -- I found myself saying that to our sons when they were much younger. I am happy to report that the reason I am wearing trifocals has nothing to do with television, and this early concern proved to be harmless. However, the concerns about violence, as well as concerns about the way men and women are portrayed, about how ethic minorities are portrayed, and various concerns about advertising and other content issues, have continued to this day. But, the concern that we are focused on -- and the one that was among the very first concerns to surface -- is the issue of TV violence.

II. Violence Concerns

The TV violence concern made its official debut in 1952 with the first of a series of congressional hearings. That particular hearing was held in the House of Representatives before the Commerce Committee (United States Congress, 1952). The following year, in 1953, the first major Senate hearing was held before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, then headed by Senator Estes Kefauver, who convened a panel to inquire into the impact of television violence on juvenile delinquency (United States Congress, 1955a; 1955b). Senator Kefauver established the model hearing by inviting several panels of experts or interested parties to discuss TV violence. In the typical hearing, there would be a panel of parents and teachers to testify about their concerns about television violence. The next panel was a group of experts from the criminal justice system or general field of social science, followed by a panel of TV executives.

In one of the early hearings, a developmental psychologist, Eleanor Maccoby (1954), who was -- and is still -- a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, and Paul Lazarsfeld (1955), who was a Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, testified on the effects of television violence. Both of those social scientists noted that, while we really did not have much information on the impact of television (because social scientists were not studying that issue), we did know something about the way films influence children and we could make some suggestions about television. That early testimony initiated a series of congressional hearings on television violence and set a pattern for congressional hearings that have been held to this date. The most recent congressional activity in this area was the February 2, 1995, Children's Media Protection Act of 1995 introduced by Senator Kent Conrad.

There have been many hearings since the 1950's, but there has been only limited change -- until recently -- because this is a difficult issue. TV violence reduction is fraught with legal complications, with policy pitfalls, with social scientists arguing with each other. Nevertheless, our knowledge base has changed over time and there have been some significant changes in research and landmark reviews of that research.

There were many hearings, but the landmark events that map out where we have been and what we need to do have moved forward from those 1950's hearings. The National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence was a presidential commission -- established by President Johnson in response to the assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King -- to assess the role violence plays in our society. This was a broad-ranging national commission, sometimes referred to as the Eisenhower commission because it was chaired by Milton Eisenhower (who, I must say, was a former President of Kansas State University). The Eisenhower Commission issued it's report in 1969 -- actually, a bookshelf full of reports, there were about nine or ten staff report volumes. One of those volumes was devoted to media violence, not just television, but media violence. The sections that related to television violence reviewed the research that was available up to that date. The pace of research began to pick up speed in the 1960's with some early studies, which I will describe in a moment. Yet, there was a research base to review in the 1960's, and the conclusion of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence was, and I paraphrase: Yes, from the research that we have, although it is thin and limited, we do know that there is reason for concern about violence in media, particularly violence on television, and particularly the violence on television that is seen by children (Baker & Ball, 1969).

The next landmark event occurred at this point. A very influential Senator, John Pastore from Rhode Island, who was chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, held another hearing. This hearing differed slightly from any of the prior hearings because Senator Pastore included more than the usual parents, teachers, social scientists, and network executives. He added a wrinkle by inviting the Surgeon General of the United States to attend the hearing. When the various panels had testified, he asked the Surgeon General to make some comments. The Surgeon General's Office had just concluded the first reports on smoking and health. At this point, you have to cast your minds back to the mid 1960's. There was quite an outcry over the first Surgeon General's report on smoking and health, because it indicated that there might be some link between smoking and lung cancer. So, it was this same health officer, the Surgeon General, who was asked to comment on what had been presented at the hearing. And, the Surgeon General responded by placing the TV violence controversy in the same context as the smoking and lung cancer controversy -- a public health context.

Now, that was the first time that TV violence had ever been framed as a public health issue. The Surgeon General suggested that he would approach the issue by establishing a panel of scientists and representatives from the industry to review the evidence and to develop a consensus report. And, he got his wish.

A 12-member panel was appointed with distinguished social scientists, professionals in psychiatry and child development, political scientists, and two representatives of the industry. Thomas Coffin, a psychologist who was Vice President for Research at NBC, and Joseph Klapper, a sociologist who was Director of the Office of Social Research at CBS, were among the industry representatives. Senator Pastore did not get his report in one year; it took longer, things always do. But, the funding established 60 research projects around the country, and it took three years to conduct the research and write the report. The report, released in 1972, concluded that violence on television does influence children who view that programming and does increase the likelihood that they will become more aggressive in certain ways. Not all children are affected, not all children are affected in the same way, but there is evidence that TV violence can be harmful to young viewers (Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behaviour, 1972; Murray, 1973).

The next landmark report was the 1982 study from the National Institute of Mental Health (1982). This review was a ten year follow-up to the Surgeon General's report. The conclusion: Now with 10 years of more research, we know that violence on television does affect the aggressive behaviour of children -- and adults for that matter -- and there are many more reasons for concern about violence on television. "The research question has moved from asking whether or not there is an effect to seeking explanations for that effect." (National Institute of Mental Health, 1982, p. 6)

The next report was in 1992 from the American Psychological Association Task Force on Television and Social Behaviour (Huston, et al, 1992), which concluded that 30 years of research confirms the harmful effects of TV violence. These conclusions were reaffirmed by the American Psychological Association Commission on Violence and Youth (1993; Eron & Slaby, 1994).

How are we affected? There seem to be three major avenues: Direct effects, Desensitisation, and the Mean World Syndrome:

The Direct effects process suggests that children and adults who watch a lot of violence on television may become more aggressive and/or they may develop favourable attitudes and values about the use of aggression to resolve conflicts.

The second effect, Desensitisation, suggests that children who watch a lot of violence on television may become less sensitive to violence in the real world around them, less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others, and more willing to tolerate ever-increasing levels of violence in our society.

The third effect, the Mean World Syndrome, suggests that children or adults who watch a lot of violence on television may begin to believe that the world is as mean and dangerous in real life as it appears on television, and hence, they begin to view the world as a much more mean and dangerous place.

III. Violence Research

There is research evidence to support all three types of effects -- Direct, Desensitisation, and Mean World -- and each may operate independently of the other. For example, one study, conducted by Aletha Huston-Stein and her colleagues (Stein & Friedrich, 1972), assessed the effects of viewing either violent or prosocial (non-violent) television programming. In this study, about one hundred pre-school-aged children enrolled in a special nursery school at Pennsylvania State University were divided into three groups and were assigned to watch a particular diet of programming. The children watched either a diet of Batman and Superman cartoons, a diet of Mister Rogers' Neighbourhood, or a diet of neutral programming (programs designed for pre-schoolers that contained neither violence nor prosocial messages). Huston-Stein and her colleagues observed the youngsters on the playground and in the classroom for two weeks to assess the level of aggressive and helpful behaviour displayed by these children. Then, the children viewed the program diet one half hour a day, three days a week, for four weeks. They watched 12 half-hour episodes of the diet to which they were assigned.

The researchers found that the youngsters who watched the Batman and Superman cartoons were more physically active, both in the classroom and on the playground. Also, they were more likely to get into fights and scrapes with each other, play roughly with toys, break toys, snatch toys from others, and get into little altercations. No mass murders broke out, but, they were simply more aggressive and had more aggressive encounters. The other group, the group that had watched Mister Rogers' Neighbourhood, was much more likely to play co-operatively with their toys, spontaneously offer to help the teacher, and engage in what might be called "positive peer counselling." In this latter instance, the focus of the Mister Rogers' sessions was similar to "peer counselling" -- being kind, being sensitive to others needs, and being concerned about others feelings. For example, Fred Rogers might suggest that if someone looks sad, you could say, "Gee, you look sad today, are you feeling okay? Do you want to go play or do something." The group that watched the neutral programming was neither more aggressive nor more helpful. However, what is interesting about this study is that it shows both sides of the coin: What children watch does affect how they behave, both positively and negatively.

There is a wide range of studies (see Murray, 1973; 1980; 1994; Paik & Comstock, 1994), similar in scope to the Huston-Stein project, that addresses the short-term effects of viewing violence. However, one of the longer-term studies -- indeed, one of the longest-term studies -- is the work of Leonard Eron (1982; Eron & Slaby, 1995), who, in 1963, began his study by assessing the development of aggression in third graders, eight year olds, in a small upstate New York town. In the course of the study, he asked children to report on their television viewing and other things they liked to do, as well as their ratings of the aggression of other children. He also interviewed teachers and asked them to indicate who in the classroom was more aggressive or less aggressive, and he obtained information from parents about children's television viewing and the parent's home discipline and family values. He conducted that study when these youngsters were eight years old and wrote a report about the aggressive behaviour of the eight year olds, noting in passing that there was a relationship between children's level of aggressive behaviour and their television viewing. Children who reported, or whose parents reported, that the youngsters preferred and often viewed more violent programs were more likely to be the ones nominated by their peers and teachers as more aggressive in school. He followed up on these youngsters 10 years later, when they were 18 years old, and again found a relationship between TV viewing and aggression. However, the most interesting, and strongest, relationship was between early television viewing at age 8 and aggressive behaviour at age 18. He concluded that there were some long-term effects of early television viewing on later aggressive behaviour. In the 1980's, Eron again followed up on these children as young adults, at age 30. Now, he found that there was a relationship between early television viewing and arrest and conviction for violent interpersonal crimes; spouse abuse, child abuse, murder, and aggravated assault. This study is not without controversy, but there is sufficient evidence to convince some researchers that there is a long-term effect of early violence viewing on later aggressive behaviour.

With regard to the issue of the Mean World Syndrome, there have been numerous studies conducted by a research group at the University of Pennsylvania, led by George Gerbner (Gerbner & Signorielli, 1990; Gerbner, Morgan, & Signorielli, 1993). For more than 25 years, this group has studied the content of prime time and Saturday morning television. In the fall of each year, they videotape all prime time and Saturday morning television for one week and then provide a detailed analysis of the content of that programming. With regard to violence, the findings indicate that, over the years, there are about 5 violent acts committed during every hour of prime time television and 20 to 25 violent acts committed every hour of Saturday morning children's programming. Of course, the levels of violence have varied somewhat over the 20 years of monitoring, particularly in the area of children's television programming. However, it should be noted that violence in children's programming dropped to its lowest level, 13 acts per hour, in 1973 -- the year following the release of the 1972 Surgeon General's report that identified a link between TV violence and children's aggression. Also, violence on children's television reached its highest level in 20 years, about 32 acts per hour, in 1980-81 when the Federal Communications Commission was discussing the "deregulation" of children's television.

In later studies, Gerbner and his colleagues began to explore the relationship of the amount of television viewing and viewers' perceptions of the world. For example, the researchers would ask questions about viewers' perception of risk in the world: How likely is it that you are going to be the victim of a violent crime in the next six months? How far from your home would you be willing to walk alone at night? Have you done anything recently to your home to increase it's security -- added burglar alarms, changed locks -- in the past six months? What percentage of the workforce do you think is involved in law enforcement activities? The researchers found that the amount of television viewed predicted fearfulness -- heavy television viewers (those who watch four hours or more each day), as opposed to light viewers (those who watched an hour or less per day), were much more fearful of the world around them, much more likely to over estimate their level of risk, to over estimate the number of persons involved in law enforcement. There are obviously different risk levels in different areas of the country, but those who watched more television were more fearful than those who watched less television. Also, there are special sub-groups, such as the elderly, that were more fearful who also tend to watch more television. And so, the research team began to develop the notion of the Mean World Syndrome: Watching a lot of television determines your perceptions of the risks of the world because there is so much violence on television. Also, it was interesting that this viewing and fearfulness relationship held across education levels, across income levels, across gender -- rarely do you find research results in the social sciences that play out in the same way across education, gender, or income levels.

One other finding from the analysis of television content is that there are certain groups that are more likely to be victims on TV. The typical perpetrator is a white male in his 20's or 30's, described as in the prime of life, with a lot of money but no visible means of support. The principal victims have tended to be female, non-white, foreign born, and elderly. That pattern has changed somewhat over the years (Berry, 1988), and it's changing still, but often it is the case that there is a heavy victimisation of non-white, foreign born, elderly, and female individuals on television.

IV. Policy Shifts

The broad area of children's television has been a very sensitive issue for Congress and the FCC (Kunkel & Watkins, 1987) because there is extensive and intensive public concern. And, within this broad area of concern, television violence is the most explosive. What can we do about TV violence? I would contend that we know enough about TV violence to warrant action. We know that there is a relationship between TV violence and changes in attitudes and behaviour. As noted earlier, the three main types of effects are: 1) direct effects -- increased aggressive behaviour or willingness to use violence; 2) desensitisation -- increased acceptance of violence as normal; and 3) Mean World Syndrome --increased fearfulness and a belief that the real world is as dangerous as the television world.

The concern about TV violence has a long history and was forcefully enunciated as early as 1961 by the then Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Newton Minow, in his inaugural address to the National Association of Broadcasters. To prepare for that address, Minow had spent a week watching television. Minow's report on this viewing took the following form:

"When television is good, nothing -- not the theatre, not the magazines or newspapers -- nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit-and-loss sheet, or rating book to distract you -- and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland. You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials -- many screaming, cajoling, and offending." (Minow, 1961, cited in Barnouw, 1975, p. 300)

This address was recorded by history as the "vast wasteland" speech, and it became a symbol for television in the 1960's. Minow was to revisit the vast wasteland 30 years later in 1991. Now, speaking as the former chair of the FCC on the thirtieth anniversary of vast wasteland, he observed:

"In 1961, I worried that my children would not benefit much from television, but in 1991, I worry that my grandchildren will actually be harmed by it." (Minow, 1991, p. 12)

However, other FCC chairpersons did not agree with Minow's assessment, and the spirit changed in the 1980's. Mark Fowler, who was appointed in 1981 as the new FCC Chairman, also was asked to give his inaugural address to the National Association of Broadcasters. He approached the task in much the same way as Newton Minow; he sat down and watched a lot of television. But, his view was different. When Chairman Fowler spoke to the NAB, he said, in effect, When I looked at television, I saw a vast richness -- a rich array of programming, a rich array of opportunity -- I did not see a vast wasteland. He suggested that this richness did not require regulation. He observed in an interview in the Washington Post (Mayer, February 6, 1983, p. K-6) that we don't regulate washing machines, we don't regulate dishwashers, television is just another home appliance, it's just a "toaster with pictures."

The two FCC policy statements or "viewpoints" (vast wasteland and toaster with pictures) produced dramatically-different outcomes. Broadcasters were so surprised by Newton Minow's vast wasteland speech that they ultimately agreed to assign large parts of the UHF spectrum to public broadcasting. Mark Fowler's "toaster with pictures" speech resulted in a deregulation of children's television (Geller, 1988) that led to an increase in the amount of advertising on children's television and a violence index rating on Saturday morning children's television that jumped to the highest level of violence in 20 years of monitoring: 32 violent acts per hour.

Now, we have a new Chairman of the FCC who has said on several occasions that he is concerned about the amount of violence on television and has called for a "New Social Compact" to change children's television. The new Chairman, Reed Hundt, noted in a speech to the American Psychological Association in August 1994:

"I am joined in my deep concern about TV violence by many members of Congress. I have discussed the topic with Senators Hollings, Inouye, Simon, Dorgan, Congressman Markey, and many other Members of the House and Senate. In fact, it is one of the issues most frequently raised in my discussions with Congress, and it was the topic of the first question that was addressed to me at my confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee. ... Television has a significant impact on children's lives. That impact is only going to increase as our technology matures and true, interactive video replaces simple television viewing. Social science has documented that television can be an effective educational tool, especially for young children, and our public policies must ensure that this positive potential does not escape us." (Hundt, 1994, pp. 10-13)

It is too early to assess the impact of this "New Social Compact" viewpoint on public policy, but in April 1995, the FCC promulgated a rule-making procedure (Federal Communications Commission, 1995) that would enhance the implementation of the Children's Television Act of 1990. In the proposed rules, broadcasters would be required to air three hours of educational programming for children each week. Thus, we have moved from the "vast wasteland," to the "toaster with pictures," to the "New Social Compact."

V. Actions

Can we change the nature of children's television? I believe the answer is yes, and it would seem that there are three areas or levels in which we can bring about some changes: home, school, and industry.

At the home level, we can encourage greater awareness of the influence of television on children and enhance understanding of ways that parents and teachers can help children use TV effectively. For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Co-operative Extension Service at Kansas State University (Murray & Lonnborg, 1995) has produced a parent guide publication on this topic. This guide is a review of some of the concerns about television and children and provides suggestions for parents in using television in a constructive manner. One of the straightforward techniques for use at home that is very effective is viewing along with your children and talking about what they see on television. With very young children talking about how violence is faked and what would happen if you actually did some of those things that you see on television is a very basic intervention. Such interventions, at the personal or family level, can lead to enhanced understanding of television's influence and more effective use of this medium.

At the school level, interventions such as advocating for the inclusion of media literacy courses in school systems can be very effective. These "critical viewing" programs help children understand how television works and the process of effects. There are many very effective programs, but, in the case of media literacy addressed to the violence issue, one interesting new program has been developed by the Centre for Media Literacy (1995). Called "Beyond Blame -- Challenging Violence in the Media, a Multimedia Literacy Program for Community Empowerment," this program is one that a school system or a community agency might use as a general educational intervention. Another approach to enhancing public awareness is working with parents and communities to address television violence as a public health issue. There has been a long history of public advocacy concern about television violence (Kunkel & Murray, 1991; Montgomery, 1989), and there are several major organisations -- Centre for Media Education, Centre for Media Literacy, Mediascope, National Alliance for Non-violent Programming, and the National Telemedia Council --that are producing materials for parents and community organisations. One such videotape, The Kids are Watching, from Mediascope (1993) is very effective in stimulating discussion of the impact of TV violence.

Finally, there are industry and government activities that might be undertaken to change children's television. The Children's Television Act of 1990 did set some limits on the amount of advertising in children's programming and did set some expectations that stations applying for license renewal will have to explain how they have served the educational needs of children in their broadcast area. And, the FCC is now thinking about elaborating that by including quotas (Federal Communications Commission, 1995), such as one hour per day of children's educational television.

Another approach, which is more voluntary than regulatory, involves working with the industry to introduce changes in the role that advertising plays in supporting children's programming. One might encourage advertisers to shift their support of children's programming from advertising to underwriting. Sponsorship of children's TV would then shift from advertising to enhance corporate income to underwriting to enhance corporate image.

Why recommend a shift from "income" to "image?" The rationale for this change begins with the observation that Saturday morning children's television is currently a mass-audience format and there are few age-specific, targeted educational programs. One of the reasons for this absence of age-specific programming is the need to generate programming that will fit advertisers' needs for a large audience of 2- to 12-year-old children. One result is the large number of violent cartoons. For example, we have noted that there are about 25 violent acts per hour in Saturday morning programming directed at children. And, one might ask, why does Saturday morning programming look the way it does? Why is it as violent as it is, and what is the relationship to advertising? One of the reasons for cartoon programs on Saturday morning is the fact that advertisers want to get a maximum return on their program, and they need to have the largest possible audience. The only way this can be done is to accumulate the audience from 2- to 12-year-old children. When advertisers talk about the child audience, they are not talking about 6 year olds or 4 year olds, they are talking about that entire range of childhood from 2 to 12 years. The only format that will hold the attention span of the large, heterogeneous audience is fast-action, fast-paced programming -- animated programming. And so, Saturday morning programming contains fast-action, fast-paced cartoons that tend to be violent. You can create fast-paced, fast-moving, non-violent programming -- Sesame Street is an example -- but, it is difficult to create such programming for a broad age range. Therefore, we are likely to have fast-action, fast-paced, highly-violent cartoons because they hold the attention of a broad age range of 2 to 12 year olds. However, if we moved from advertising supporting corporate "income" to sponsorship supporting corporate "image," there would be no need to assemble a huge audience and the nature of programming might change. For example, one might find advertisers underwriting specialised, age-specific programming that is targeted to particular interest areas of a highly-differentiated child audience.

Other industry level initiatives might include further development of the parental advisory that the television networks began implementing in 1987. The "viewer discretion" warnings that have been attached to prime time movies since September, 1987 have been shown to have some influence in reducing viewership among the 2- to 11-year-old audiences. Hamilton (1994), conducted an analysis of audience rating data for network movies carrying viewer discretion advisories broadcast during the period September 17, 1987 to September 26, 1993. He found that movies carrying the warnings lost .59 ratings points among children 2 to 11. This translates into 222,000 fewer children -- or a 14% drop in average audience rating for this age group -- for movies that contained viewer discretion warnings. There were no changes in viewership for teens or adults. These findings suggest that parents are sensitive to the warnings and will act on the information provided concerning program content.

A related development being considered by the industry is the possible rating of violence levels on television programs and the potential co-ordination with electronic screening devices known as "V-chip" technology. While there is no clear agreement on the implementation of ratings and screening technology, some members of Congress have suggested legislation that would require the FCC to mandate the inclusion of an electronic circuit, or V-chip, in all new television sets. This technology is rather similar to the circuitry required for decoding "closed-caption" program signals. In this instance, the industry would transmit a signal concerning the violent content and parents could program their television set to block programs containing the identified signal. The successful implementation of this type of intervention would require the participation of the industry in rating and coding programs and the involvement of parents in responding to these ratings. Although there are questions about the impact of this V-chip approach, there is evidence from the Hamilton (1994) study that parents may be responsive to viewer warnings in relation to young children.

There are reasons for concern about the impact of television violence. Social scientists have studied and discussed this issue for almost 40 years. During this period, hundreds of studies and numerous national reviews and reports have confirmed the potential harmful effects of televised violence. The major reviews and interpretations of research have included the Surgeon General's study in 1972, the NIMH report in 1982, and the American Psychological Association reports in 1992 and 1993. Each of these reports confirms the need to address the issue of TV violence but questions remain about the most efficient and effective process.

I believe the most useful approach to be a multilevel, systemic change in the way American society is willing to deal with media violence. The changes must take place at the home, school, and industry levels. These changes must include educational programs -- for both parents and children -- that are designed to enhance understanding of television's influence on children and the role that parents can play in moderating that influence. Also, there must be changes in the television industry, both voluntary and regulatory, that will reduce the incidence of violence in programming and increase the positive influence of television.

All of these changes are do-able. All of these changes are worthwhile. Many of these changes are in process, and many can be expedited with community and industry support. The combined influence of voluntary changes in the ratings or parental advisories offered by industry and FCC leadership in implementing the Children's Television Act of 1990 should result in fewer violent programs and greater numbers of educational and entertaining programs.

Industry leadership in the past resulted in major changes in children's television. The CBS initiatives in the mid 1970's, following the Surgeon General's alarm about TV violence, led to the development of five cartoon series that shared a common goal -- educating, while entertaining, young viewers. Probably the most famous series in this set of five was Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, which was based on the life of Bill Cosby. However, other series in the collection, such as the USA of Archie, the Harlem Globetrotters Popcorn Machine, and ISIS, all made important contributions to children's intellectual and emotional development. Reviewed in the CBS report Learning While They Laugh (Columbia Broadcasting System, 1977), the research demonstrated that these were very effective educational programs that captured the imagination and provided entertainment for young viewers.

We have achieved success in the past when we have combined the creative talents of producers and broadcasters in response to the challenge of public concern about children's television. Now is the time to reinvigorate that creative partnership to enhance the intellectual and emotional development of our youngest citizens. We have demonstrated that children can learn from television and we have demonstrated that they can "learn while they laugh." All we need is the firm resolve to develop new approaches to strengthen the positive role of television in our children's lives.

LITERATURE CITED

Andreasen, M. S. (1990). Evolution in the family's use of television: Normative data from industry and academe. In J. Bryant (Ed.), Television and the American family (pp. 3-55). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

American Psychological Association (1993). Violence & Youth: Psychology's Response. Volume I: Summary Report of the American Psychological Association Commission on Violence and Youth. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Baker, R. K. & Ball, S. J. (1969). Mass media and violence: A staff report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office.

Barnouw, E. (1975). Tube of plenty: The evolution of American television. New York: Oxford University Press.

Berry, G. L. (1988). Multicultural role portrayals on television as a social psychological issue. In S. Oskamp (Ed.), Applied Social Psychology Annual (vol. 8), Television as a social issue (pp. 118-129). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

Boyer, E. L. (1991). Ready to learn: A mandate for the nation. Princeton, NJ: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Centre for Media Literacy (1995). Beyond blame: Challenging violence in the media -- A multi-media literacy program for community empowerment. Los Angeles, CA: Centre for Media Literacy, 1995. (Available from the Centre for Media Literacy, 1962 S. Shenandoah Street, Los Angeles, CA 90034.)

Columbia Broadcasting System (1977). Learning while they laugh. New York: CBS Office of Social Research.

Eron, L. D. (1982). Parent child interaction, television violence and aggression of children. American Psychologist, 27, 197-211.

Eron, L. D. & Slaby, R. G. (1994). Introduction. In L. D. Eron; J. H. Gentry; & P. Schlegel (Eds.), Reason to hope: A psychosocial perspective on violence and youth. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Federal Communications Commission (1995). Notice of Proposed Rule Making: In the Matter of Policies and Rules Concerning Children's Television Programming -- Revision of Programming Policies for Television Broadcast Stations, FCC 95-143, MM Docket No. 93-48, April 5, 1995.

Geller, H. (1988). The FCC under Mark Fowler: A mixed bag. Hastings Journal of Communications and Entertainment Law, 10(2), 530.

Gerbner, G. & Signorielli, N. (1990). Violence profile, 1967 through 1988-89: Enduring patterns. Manuscript, University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School of Communications.

Gerbner, G., Morgan, M., & Signorielli, N. (1993). Television violence profile: The turning point. Manuscript, University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School of Communications.

Hamilton, J. T. (1994). Marketing violence: The impact of labelling violent television content. Manuscript, Duke University, Sanford Institute of Public Policy.

Hundt, R. (1994). A role for psychologists in the communication revolution. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Los Angeles, August 14, 1994.

Huston, A. C., Donnerstein, E., Fairchild, H., Feshbach, N.D., Katz, P.A., Murray, J.P., Rubinstein, E.A., Wilcox, B., & Zuckerman, D. (1992). Big world, small screen: The role of television in American society. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

Kunkel, D. & Murray, J. P. (1991). Television, children, and social policy: Issues and resources for child advocates. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 20(1), 88-93.

Kunkel, D. & Watkins, B. (1987). Evolution of children's television regulatory policy. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 31(4), 367-389.

Lazarsfeld, P. F. (1955). Why is so little known about the effects of television and what can be done? Public Opinion Quarterly, 19, 243-251.

Maccoby, E. E. (1954). Why do children watch television? Public Opinion Quarterly, 18, 239-244.

Mayer, C. E. (February 6, 1983). FCC Chief's fears: Fowler sees threat in regulation. Washington Post, K-6.

Mediascope (1993). The kids are watching -- A 13-minute video for teachers, parents, and community organisations. Studio City, CA: Mediascope, 1993. (Available from Mediascope, 12711 Ventura Boulevard, Studio City, CA 91604.)

Minow, N. N. (1961, May). The "vast wasteland." Address to the National Association of Broadcasters, Washington, D.C.

Minow, N. N. (1991). How vast the wasteland now? New York: Gannett Foundation Media Centre, Columbia University.

Montgomery, K. C. (1989). Target: Prime time -- Advocacy groups and the struggle over entertainment television. New York: Oxford University Press.

Murray, J. P. (1973). Television and violence: Implications of the Surgeon General's research program. American Psychologist, 28(6), 472-478.

Murray, J. P. (1980). Television and youth: 25 years of research and controversy. Boys Town, NE: The Boys Town Centre for the Study of Youth Development.

Murray, J. P. (1994). The impact of televised violence. Hofstra Law Review, 22(4), 809-825.

Murray, J. P. & Lonnborg, B. (1995). Children and television: Using TV sensibly. Manhattan, KS: Kansas State University, Co-operative Extension Service.

National Institute of Mental Health (1982). Television and behaviour: Ten years of scientific progress and implications for the eighties (vol. 1), Summary report. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office.

Paik, H. & Comstock, G. (1994). The effects of television violence on antisocial behaviour: A meta-analysis. Communication Research, 21(4), 516-546.

Stein, A. H. & Friedrich, L. K. (1972). Television content and young children's behaviour. In J. P. Murray; E. A. Rubinstein; & G. A. Comstock (Eds.) Television and social behaviour (vol. 2), Television and social learning (pp. 202-317). Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office.

Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behaviour (1972). Television and growing up: The impact of televised violence. Washington, D.C.: U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

United States Congress. House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce (1952). Investigation of Radio and Television Programs, Hearings and Report, 82nd Congress, 2nd session, June 3-December 5, 1952. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office.

United States Congress, Senate Committee of the Judiciary, Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency (1955a). Juvenile Delinquency (Television Programs), Hearings, 83rd Congress, 2nd session, June 5-October 20, 1954. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office.

United States Congress, Senate Committee of the Judiciary, Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency (1955b). Juvenile Delinquency (Television Programs), Hearings, 84th Congress, 1st session, April 6-7, 1955. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office.

White, E. B. (1938, October). One Man's Meat. Harper's Magazine, 177, 553.

JOHN P. MURRAY

John P. Murray, Ph.D. is a Professor and the Director of the School of Family Studies and Human Services at Kansas State University. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and recent President of its Division of Child Youth and Family Services. Dr. Murray's interest in television and society is reflected in nearly 30 years of research, teaching and public policy concerning children, youth and families. In the late 1960's and early 70's, Dr. Murray served as Research Co-ordinator for the Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behaviour at the National Institute of Mental Health resulting in the first Surgeon General's report on television violence in 1972. Subsequently, he taught in the School of Behavioural Sciences at Macquarie University in Sydney where he conducted research on the effects of the introduction of television in the Australian "outback." His concern about the impact of television has continued during appointments at the University of Michigan, the Boys Town Centre for the Study of Youth Development, and Kansas State University. Over the years, Dr. Murray has produced 10 books and more than 80 articles on children's television, including a 1980 reference book, Television and Youth: 25 Years of Research and Controversy, and the 1992 American Psychological Association Report, Big World, Small Screen: The Role of Television in American Society.

• In 1950, only 10% of American homes had a television and by 1960 the percentage had grown to 90%. Today 99% of homes have a television. In fact, more families own a television than a phone. (1)
• 54% of U.S. children have a television set in their bedrooms. (2)
• Children spend more time learning about life through media than in any other manner. The average child spends approximately 28 hours a week watching television, which is twice as much time as they spend in school. (3)
• The average American child will witness over 200,000 acts of violence on television including 16,000 murders before age 18. (4)
• Polls show further that three-quarters of the public finds television entertainment too violent. When asked to select measures which would reduce violent crime "a lot," Americans chose restrictions on television violence more often than gun control. (5)
• A study of population data for various countries showed homicide rates doubling within the 10 to 15 years after the introduction of television, even though television was introduced at different times in each site examined. (6)
• Longitudinal studies tracking viewing habits and behaviour patterns of a single individual found that 8-year-old boys, who viewed the most violent programs growing up, were the most likely to engage in aggressive and delinquent behaviour by age 18 and serious criminal behaviour by age 30. (7)
• Watching TV has been linked to obesity in children. (8)
• Studies suggest that higher rates of television viewing are correlated with increased tobacco usage, increased alcohol intake and younger onset of sexual activity. (9,10,11)
• Potential adverse effects of excessive exposure to media include: increased violent behaviour; obesity, decreased physical activity and fitness, increased cholesterol levels and sodium intake; repetitive strain injury (video computer games); insomnia; photic seizures; impaired school performance; increased sexual activity and use of tobacco and alcohol; decreased attention span; decreased family communication; desensitisation; excess consumer focus. (9,21)
• Fifty-five percent of children questioned usually watch television alone or with a friend, but not with their families. (13)
• According to the National Television Violence Study, the context in which violence is portrayed is as important to its impact as the amount of violence. The study concluded that 66% of children's programming had violence. Of the shows with violent content three-quarters demonstrated unpunished violence and when violence occurred 58% of the time, victims were not shown experiencing pain. (14)
• Forty-six percent of all television violence identified by the study took place in children's cartoons. Children's programs were least likely to depict the long-term consequences of violence (5%) and they portray violence in a humorous fashion 67% of the time. (14)
• The use of parental warnings and violence advisories made the programs more of a magnet than they might otherwise have been. Parental Discretion Advised and PG-13 and R ratings significantly increased boys' interest in the shows, although they made girls less interested in watching. (14)

VIDEO GAMES AND CYBERSPACE VIOLENCE

• The Internet, a global "network of networks" is not governed by a government or private entity. This vacuum leaves no checks or limits on the information maintained or made accessible to users. No person or entity owns the Internet, leaving no one accountable for the accidents which occur on its highways. (15)
• The incidence of violence on the Internet is difficult to quantify because the technology has moved faster than our capability to monitor it. Evidence of violence is anecdotal rather than statistical mainly because communication on the Internet is private. Reported cases of abuse are relatively infrequent, but as the technology continues to advance, there is potential for great harm as well as great good. (15)
• The Internet could become a stalking ground for child molesters who have moved from the playground to the Internet attracted by the anonymity it offers. The National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children has documented more than a dozen cases in the last year of cyberspace seduction by paedophiles in which children were lured by on-line predators into travelling to locations hundreds of miles from their homes where they were then sexually assaulted. (16)
• The Oklahoma bombing suspect obtained a copy of the "Turner Diaries," a book which advocates the violent overthrow of government, off the Internet. Whereas before, one would have had to know exactly where to look and be pre-disposed to search for the book, the Internet made it easily accessible to a global audience. (17)
• Although there has been less research on the effects of violence in video games and the Internet because they are new and changing technologies, there is little reason to doubt that findings from other media studies will apply here too. Young children instinctively imitate actions they observe, without always possessing the intellect or maturity to determine if such actions are appropriate. Due to their role-modelling capacity to promote real world violence, there is deep concern that playing violent video games, with their fully digitalised human images, will cause children to become more aggressive towards other children and become more tolerant of, and more likely to engage in, real-life violence. (18)

MUSIC VIOLENCE

• The Parents Music Resource Centre reports that American teenagers listen to an estimated 10,500 hours of rock music between the 7th and 12th grades alone - just 500 hours less than they spend in school over twelve years. (19)
• Entertainment Monitor reported that only 10 of the top 40 popular CDs on sale during the 1995 holiday season were free of profanity, or lyrics dealing with drugs, violence and sex. (19)
• A recent survey by the Recording Industry Association of America found that many parents do not know what lyrics are contained in the popular music their children listen to. (20)
• In September 1995, Warner Music Group bowed to public pressure and announced it was severing its 50% stake in Interscope Records, home to Nine Inch Nails and controversial rap artists Snoop Doggy Dog and Dr. Dre. Rap artists simply turned to a different distribution network and their CDs continue to hit the stores with lyrics which glorify guns, rape, and murder. (20)

NOTES:

1. Nielson Media Research, 1995

2. National Television Violence Study, issued by Mediascope, February, 1996.

3. Nielson Media Research, 1993

4. Centre for Media and Public Affairs, 1992

5. Lichter, R. S., "Bam! Whoosh! Crack! TV Worth Squelching," The Washington Times, December 19, 1994.

6. Centerwall, BS: Exposure to television as a cause of violence. In Comstock G (ed): Public Communication as Behaviour. Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press Inc; 1989, 2:1-58.

7. Dr. Leonard Eron, University of Illinois at Chicago, Testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Subcommittee on Communications, June 12, 1995.

8. Dietz, WH and Gortmacher, SL (1985) Paediatrics, 75,807-812; and Tucker, L.A. (1986) Adolescent, 21, 7970806.

9. Dietz WH, Gortmaker SL. Do we fatten our children at the TV set? Obesity and television viewing in children and adolescents. Paediatrics. 1985;75:807-812.

10. DuRant RH, Baranowski T, Johnson M, et al. The relationship among television watching, physical activity, and body composition of young children. Paediatrics. 1994;94:445-449.

11. Gortmaker SL, Must A, Sobol AM, et al. Television viewing as a cause of increasing obesity among children in the United States, 1986-1990. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 1996;150:356-62.

12. Physician Guide to Media Violence, American Medical Association, 1996

13. Statistics compiled by TV-Free America, Washington, DC, April 1996

14. National Television Violence Study, issued by Mediascope, February, 1996.

15. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, D.C., 1996.

16. National Centre For Missing and Exploited Children, Arlington, Virginia, 1996.

17. Militia Task Force/Clan Watch, Southern Poverty Law Centre, Montgomery, Alabama, 1996.

18. Robert E. McAfee, M.D., Immediate Past President, American Medical Association, Testimony before House Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance, June 1994. Provenzo, Eugene. Video Kids: Making Sense of Nintendo. Harvard University Press, 1991.

19. Entertainment Monitor, December 1995.

20. "An Unbiased Voice in the Word War," The Washington Post, November 8, 1995.

21 Anyamwu E, Harding GF, Jeavons PM, et al: "telephillic syndrome" in pattern and photosensitivity epilepsy: report of three cases. East Afr Med J. 1995;72:402-405.

• John P. Murray, Ph.D
• Professor and Director
• School of Family Studies and Human Services
• Kansas State University

  Questions about the effects of television violence have existed since the earliest days of this medium. Indeed, the first expression of formal concern can be found in Congressional hearings in the early 1950s. For example, the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency held a series of hearings during 1954-55 on the impact of television programs on juvenile crime. These hearings set the stage for continuing congressional investigations by this committee and others in the House and Senate from the 1950s to the present.

  These early congressional inquiries were focused on what we did not know about television and violence because social scientists were slow to respond to concerns about this medium of popular entertainment. Although there was a body of research on movies and comic books, these were quite different forms of media and different effects might be expected. Still, prominent social scientists such as developmental psychologist Eleanor Maccoby and sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld testified at the 1954-55 hearings that, although more research was needed, there were important reasons for concern about televised violence (Lazarsfeld, 1955; Maccoby, 1954; United States Congress, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 1955a; 1955b; 1965a; 1965b; 1966).

  In addition to the congressional hearings begun in the 1950s (which have continued through 1994), there are landmark reports that include: National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (Baker & Ball, 1969); Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behaviour (1972); the report on children and television drama by the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (1982); National Institute of Mental Health, Television and Behaviour Report (NIMH, 1982; Pearl, Bouthilet, & Lazar, 1982); National Research Council (1993), violence report; and reports from the American Psychological Association's "Task Force on Television and Society" (Huston, et al., 1992) and "Commission on Violence and Youth" (American Psychological Association, 1992; Donnerstein, Slaby, & Eron, 1992). All of these reports confirm the harmful effects of media violence on the behaviour of children, youth, and adults who view such programming.

  And yet, despite decades of research, there is a perception that the research evidence on TV violence is unclear or contradictory. This perception is incorrect and this review will address the following issues: What do we know about the impact of television violence? What are some of the major research findings that form the basis for concern? Without belabouring prior reviews, the main issues revolve around the extent of exposure to violence and the correlational, experimental and field studies that demonstrate the effects of this viewing on the attitudes and behaviour of children and adults.

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• Extent of Viewing:

  Children begin watching television at a very early age, sometimes as early as six months, and are ardent viewers by the time that they are two or three years old. The general pattern of viewing is one of a steady rise in the number of hours viewed from early childhood through preadolescence and then a sharp drop in viewing during the adolescent years. According to audience rating surveys (Nielsen, 1988), the typical American household has the television set on for more than seven hours each day and children age 2 to 11 spend an average of 28 hours per week viewing (Andreasen, 1990; Condry, 1989; Liebert & Sprafkin, 1988). Naturally, the content viewed is more important than the amount of viewing and televised violence is one of the chief concerns.

  The most extensive analyses of the incidence of violence on television are the studies conducted by Gerbner and his colleagues on the nature of American television programs. The results of these yearly analyses of the level of violence on American television for the 22-year period 1967-89 (Gerbner & Signorielli, 1990) indicate a consistently high level of violence. There were some minor fluctuations in the early 1970s followed by a steady increase to 1976, a sharp decline in 1977, and then a steady climb to an all-time high in 1982-83. According to Gerbner's initial analysis (Gerbner, 1972), eight out of every ten plays broadcast during the survey period in 1969 contained some form of violence, and eight episodes of violence occurred during each hour of broadcast time. Furthermore, programs especially designed for children, such as cartoons, are the most violent of all programming. Later analyses by Gerbner and Gross (1974, 1976a, 1976b) indicated that there was some decline in violence levels from 1969 to 1975, at least in terms of the prominence of killing. However, the level of violence dramatically increased in 1976 (Gerbner et al., 1977) and was followed by a decline to one of.the lowest levels in the 1977 season (Gerbner et al., 1978). This decline was quite dramatic. From the 'bumper-crop violence harvest' of 1976 to the relatively placid 1977, the percentage of programs containing violence fell from 90 to 75.5; the rate of violent episodes per hour fell from 9.5 to 6.7; and the rate of violence per program fell from 6.2 to 5.0 episodes. However, this downward trend was reversed in 1978 and through the early 1980s, and violence in weekend children's programs reached 30.3 violence episodes per hour in the 1982-83 season (Gerbner & Signorielli, 1990). Overall, the levels of violence in prime-time programming have averaged about five acts per hour and children's Saturday morning programs have averaged about 20 to 25 violent acts per hour.

  In addition to broadcast television, cable TV adds to the level of violence through new, more violent, programs, and by recycling older violent broadcasts. A recent survey by the Centre for Media and Public Affairs (Lichter & Amundson, 1992) identified 1,846 violent scenes broadcast and cablecast between 6 a.m. to midnight on one day in Washington, D.C. The most violent periods were between 6 to 9 a.m. with 497 violent scenes (165.7 per hour) and between 2 to 5 p.m. with 609 violent scenes (203 per hour). Most of this violence is presented without context or judgement as to its acceptability. And most of this violence in the early morning and afternoon is viewed by children and youth.

  What are the effects of this exposure to these levels of televised violence? What do we know about the influence of TV violence from the broad range of correlational, experimental and field studies that have been conducted over the past 40 years?

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• Correlational Studies:

  The weight of evidence from correlational studies is fairly consistent: viewing and/or preference for violent television is related to aggressive attitudes, values and behaviours. This result was true for the studies conducted when television was new, and the measures of children's aggression were teachers' ratings. It is still true for more recent studies when the measures of aggressiveness have become more sophisticated.

  To choose several studies as examples: Robinson and Bachman (1972) found a relationship between the number of hours of television viewed and adolescent self-reports of involvement in aggressive or antisocial behaviour. Atkin, Greenberg, Korzenny, and McDermott (1979) used a different measure of aggressive behaviour. They gave nine to thirteen-year-old boys and girls situations such as the following. Suppose that you are riding your bicycle down the street and some other child comes up and pushes you off your bicycle. What would you do? The response options included physical or verbal aggression along with options to reduce or avoid conflict. These investigators found that physical or verbal aggressive responses were selected by 45 per cent of heavy-television-violence viewers compared to only 21 per cent of the light-violence viewers. In a further study, Sheehan (1983) followed two groups of Australian children, first and third-graders, for a three-year period. He found that for the older group, now third through fifth grade, both the overall amount of violence viewing and the intensity of viewing were significantly related to the child's level of aggressive behaviour as rated by their classmates. Finally, in a study focused on adults, Phillips (1983) investigated the effects of the portrayal of suicides in television soap operas on the suicide rate in the United States using death records compiled by the National Centre for Health Statistics. He found, over a six-year period, that whenever a major soap opera personality committed suicide on television, within three days there was a significant increase in the number of female suicides across the nation.

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• Experimental Studies:

  The major initial experimental studies of the cause and effect relation between television/film violence and aggressive behaviour were conducted by Bandura and his colleagues (Bandura, Ross & Ross,1961, 1963) working with young children, and by Berkowitz and his associates (Berkowitz, 1962; Berkowitz & Rawlings, 1963; Berkowitz, Corwin & Heironimus, 1963) who studied adolescents. In a typical early study conducted by Bandura (Bandura, Ross & Ross, 1963), a young child was presented with a film, back-projected on a television screen, of a model who kicked and punished an inflated plastic doll. The child was then placed in a playroom setting and the incidence of aggressive behaviour was recorded. The results of these early studies indicated that children who had viewed the aggressive film were more aggressive in the playroom than those children who had not observed the aggressive model. These early studies were criticised on the grounds that the aggressive behaviour was not meaningful within the social context and that the stimulus materials were not representative of available television programming. Subsequent studies have used more typical television programs and more realistic measures of aggression, but basically Bandura's early findings still stand.

  Another early study (Liebert & Baron, 1972) investigated young children's willingness to hurt another child after viewing videotaped sections of aggressive or neutral television programs. The boys and girls were in two age groups, five to six and eight to nine-years-old. The aggressive program consisted of segments of The Untouchables, while the neutral program featured a track race. Following viewing, the children were placed in a setting in which they could either facilitate or disrupt the game-playing performance of an ostensible child playing in an adjoining room. The main findings were that the children who viewed the aggressive program demonstrated a greater willingness to hurt another child. One could ask, does the same effect hold for cartoons? The answer seems to be yes. Several studies have demonstrated that one exposure to a violent cartoon leads to increased aggression (Ellis & Sekyra, 1972; Lovaas, 1961; Mussen & Rutherford, 1961; Ross, 1972). Moreover, Hapkiewitz and Roden (1971) found that boys who had seen violent cartoons were less likely to share their toys than those who had not seen the aggressive cartoon. It seems clear from experimental studies that one can produce increased aggressive behaviour as a result of either extended or brief exposure to televised violence, but questions remain about whether this heightened aggressiveness observed in the experimental setting spills over into daily life.

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• Field Studies:

  In the typical field-experiment, the investigator presents television programs in the normal viewing setting and observes behaviour where it naturally occurs. The investigator controls the television diet either by arranging a special series of programs or by choosing towns that in the natural course of events receive different television programs.

  One early field-experiment was a study conducted by Stein and Friedrich (1972) for the Surgeon General's project. These investigators presented 97 pre-school children with a diet of either 'antisocial' 'prosocial', or 'neutral' television programs during a four-week viewing period. The antisocial diet consisted of twelve half-hour episodes of Batman and Superman cartoons. The prosocial diet was composed of twelve episodes of Mister Roger's Neighbourhood (a program that stresses such themes as sharing possessions and co-operative play). The neutral diet consisted of children's programming which was neither violent nor prosocial. The children were observed through a nine-week period, which consisted of three weeks of pre-viewing baseline, four weeks of television exposure, and two weeks of post-viewing follow-up. All observations were conducted in a naturalistic setting while the children were engaged in daily school activities. The observers recorded various forms of behaviour that could be regarded as prosocial (i.e. helping, sharing, co-operative play) or antisocial (i.e. pushing, arguing, breaking toys). The overall results indicated that children who were judged to be initially somewhat aggressive became significantly more so as a result of viewing the Batman and Superman cartoons. Moreover, the children who had viewed the prosocial diet of Mister Roger's Neighbourhood were less aggressive, more co-operative and more willing to share with other children.

  In another field-experiment, Parke and his colleagues (Parke et al., 1977) found similar heightened aggression among both American and Belgian teenage boys following exposure to aggressive films. In the Belgian study-- which replicated the findings of two similar studies conducted in the United States--teenage boys residing in a minimum-security institution were presented with a diet of either aggressive or neutral films. This study included a one-week baseline observation period, followed by one week of film viewing, and a one-week post-viewing observation period. There were four cottages involved. Two cottages contained boys with high levels of aggressive behaviour; two contained boys with low levels of aggression. One of each pair of cottages was assigned to the aggressive film condition, while the other two viewed the neutral films. Only the two initially high-aggressive cottages were affected by the movies; those boys who saw the aggressive movies increased their level of aggression, while those who were exposed to the neutral films reduced their level of aggression.

  Still, one might ask whether such results are found when the variation in television diets occurs naturally rather than by special arrangement. Williams and her colleagues (Joy, Kimball & Zabrack, 1986; Williams, 1986) had the opportunity to evaluate the impact of televised violence on the behaviour of children before and after the introduction of television in a Canadian community. They compared children living in the before/after television town with their peers in two other towns where television was well established. The three towns were called Notel (no television reception), Unitel (receiving only the government-owned commercial channel-CBC), and Multitel (receiving the CBC and three American commercial networks-ABC, CBS and NBC). Children in all three towns were evaluated at Time 1 when Notel did not receive a television signal and again at Time 2 when Notel had had television for two years (it had received the government channel-CBC). Results indicated that there were no differences across the three towns at Time 1, but at Time 2 the children from the former Notel town were significantly more aggressive, both physically and verbally, than the children in the Unitel or Multitel towns. Moreover, only children in the Notel town manifested any significant increase in physical and verbal aggression from Time 1 to Time 2.

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• Extent of Effects:

  We get a clearer picture about the extent of TV violence effects when we know more about the way children watch televised violence. For example, Ekman and his associates (Ekman et al., 1972) found that those children whose facial expressions, while viewing televised violence, depicted the positive emotions of happiness, pleasure, interest or involvement were more likely to hurt another child than were those children whose facial expressions indicated disinterest or displeasure.

  The long-term influence of television has not been extensively investigated but we do have indications from several major studies. In an initial longitudinal study Lefkowitz and his colleagues (Lefkowitz et al., 1972) were able to demonstrate long-term effects in a group of children followed-up over a ten-year period. In this instance, Eron (1963) had previously demonstrated a relationship between preference for violent media and the aggressive behaviour of these children at the age of eight. One question now posed was, would this relationship hold at later ages? To answer this question, the investigators obtained peer-rated measures of aggressive behaviour and preferences for various kinds of television, radio and comic books when the children were eight years old. Ten years later, when the members of the group were eighteen years old, the investigators again obtained measures of aggressive behaviour and television program preferences. The results for boys indicated that preference for television violence at age eight was significantly related to aggression at age eight (r = .21), but that preference for television violence at age eighteen was not related to aggression at age eighteen (r = .05). A second question posed was, could this adolescent aggressiveness be predicted from our knowledge of their viewing habits in early childhood? And, the answer seems to be yes. The important finding here is the significant relationship, for boys, between preference for violent media at age eight and aggressive behaviour at age eighteen (r = .31). Equally important is the lack of relationship in the reverse direction; that is, preference for violent television programs at age eighteen was not produced by their aggressive behaviour in early childhood (r = .01). The most plausible interpretation of this pattern of correlations is, that early preference for violent television programming and other media is one factor in the production of aggressive and antisocial behaviour when the young boy becomes a young man.

  In more recent, short- term, longitudinal studies conducted by Lefkowitz and Eron and by their colleagues (Eron, 1982; Huesmann, Langerspetz & Eron, 1984; Sheehan, 1983), they found some short-term effects of viewing violence on aggressive behaviour of children in the United States, Australia and Finland.

  Finally, the 22-year longitudinal study (Huesmann, Eron, Lefkowitz & Walder, 1984)--a follow-up to the earlier Lefkowitz et al. (1972) study--has found significant causal-correlations (r = .41) between violence viewing at age eight and serious interpersonal criminal behaviour at age 30.

  In a different approach, a study by Belson (1978) has substantiated other long-term effects and has helped pin down which types of programs have the most influence. Belson interviewed 1565 youths who were a representative sample of thirteen to seventeen-year-old boys living in London. These boys were interviewed on several occasions concerning the extent of their exposure to a selection of violent television programs broadcast during the period 1959-71. The level and type of violence in these programs were rated by members of the BBC viewing panel. It was thus possible to obtain, for each boy, a measure of both the magnitude and type of exposure to televised violence (e.g. realistic, fictional, etc.). Furthermore, each boy's level of violent behaviour was determined by his own report of how often he had been involved in any of 53 categories of violence over the previous six months. The degree of seriousness of the acts reported by the boys ranged from only slightly violent aggravation such as taunting, to more serious and very violent behaviour such as: 'I tried to force a girl to have sexual intercourse with me; I bashed a boy's head against a wall; I threatened to kill my father; I burned a boy on the chest with a cigarette while my mates held him down'. Approximately 50 per cent of the 1565 boys were not involved in any violent acts during the six-month period. However, of those who were involved in violence, 188 (12 per cent) were involved in ten or more acts during the six-month period. When Belson compared the behaviour of boys who had higher exposure to televised violence to those who had lower exposure (and had been matched on a wide variety of possible contributing factors), he found that the high- violence viewers were more involved in serious violent behaviour. Moreover, he found that serious interpersonal violence is increased by long-term exposure to (in descending order of importance):

• 1. Plays or films in which close personal relationships are a major theme and which feature verbal or physical violence
• 2. Programs in which violence seems to be thrown in for its own sake or is not necessary to the plot
• 3. Programs featuring fictional violence of a realistic nature
• 4. Programs in which the violence is presented as being in a good cause
• 5. Violent westerns.

  In summarising the extent of the effects, we agree with Comstock (Comstock & Paik, 1991) that there are multiple ways in which television and film violence influence the viewer. Comstock suggests four dimensions: Efficacy relates to whether the violence on the screen is rewarded or punished; Normativeness refers to whether the screen violence is justified or lacks any consequences; Pertinence describes the extent to which the screen violence has some similarity to the viewer's social context; and Suggestibility concerns the predisposing factors of arousal or frustration. Drawing on these four dimensions, Comstock suggests (Comstock & Paik, 1991, pp. 254-255) situations for which we have experimental evidence of the effects of film or television violence:

• 1. Rewarding or lack of punishment for those who act aggressively (e.g., Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1963).
• 2. If the aggressive behaviour is seen as justified (e.g., Berkowitz & Rawlings, 1963).
• 3. There are cues in the portrayed violence which have similarity to those in real life (e.g., Donnerstein & Berkowitz, 1981).
• 4. There is similarity between the aggressor and the viewer (e.g., Rosekrans, 1967).
• 5. Strong identification with the aggressor, such as imagining being in their place (e.g., Turner & Berkowitz, 1972).
• 6. Behaviour that is motivated to inflict harm or injury (e.g., Geen & Stonner, 1972).
• 7. Violence in which the consequences are lowered, such as no pain, sorrow, or remorse (e.g., Berkowitz & Rawlings, 1963).
• 8. Violence that is portrayed more realistically or seen as a real event (e.g., Atkin, 1983).
• 9. Violence which is not subjected to critical commentary (e.g., Lefcourt, et al., 1966).
• 10. Portrayals which seem to please the viewer (e.g., Ekman, et al., 1972).
• 11. Portrayals of violence that are unrelieved by other events (Lieberman, 1975).
• 12. Violence that includes physical abuse in addition to or compared to verbal aggression (e.g., Liebermann, 1975).
• 13. Violence that leaves the viewer in a state or arousal (e.g., Zillmann, 1971).
• 14. When viewers are predisposed to act aggressively (e.g., Donnerstein & Berkowitz, 1981).
• 15. Individuals who are in a state of frustration after they view violence, either from an external source or from the viewing itself (e.g., Worchel, Hardy, & Hurley, 1976).

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• Conclusions:

  Thus, although there is continuing discussion about the interpretation of research evidence concerning the impact of television violence, most researchers would agree with the conclusion contained in the report by the National Institute of Mental Health (1982), which suggests that there is a consensus developing among members of the research community that "...violence on television does lead to aggressive behaviour by children and teenagers who watch the programs. This conclusion is based on laboratory experiments and on field studies. Not all children become aggressive, of course, but the correlations between violence and aggression are positive. In magnitude, television violence is as strongly correlated with aggressive behaviour as any other behavioural variable that has been measured. The research question has moved from asking whether or not there is an effect, to seeking explanations for the effect." (p. 6).

  While the effects of television violence are not simple and straightforward, meta-analyses and reviews of a large body of research (Hearold, 1986; Huston, et al, 1992; Wood, Wong, & Chachere, 1991) suggest that there are clear reasons for concern and caution in relation to the impact of televised violence. To be sure, there are many factors that influence the relationship between viewing violence and aggressive behaviour and there has been considerable debate about the nature of these influences and the extent of concern about televised violence (American Psychological Association, 1985; 1992; Centerwall, 1992; Comstock & Paik, 1991, Condry, 1989; Cook, Kendzierski, & Thomas, 1983; Donnerstein, Linz, & Penrod, 1987; Freedman, 1984; 1986; Friedrich- Cofer & Huston, 1986; Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, 1982; Huesmann & Eron, 1986; Huston, et al, 1992; McGuire, 1986; Milavsky, Kessler, Stipp, & Rubens, 1982; Murray, 1973, 1980; Murray & Kippax, 1979; National Institute of Mental Health, 1982; National Research Council, 1993; Paik & Comstock, 1994; Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behaviour, 1972). Nevertheless, it is clear that there is a considerable amount of violence on television and that this violence on the small screen may translate into changes in attitudes, values, or behaviour on the part of both younger and older viewers.

  Although there are differing views on the impact of TV violence, one very strong summary is provided by Eron (1992) in his recent Congressional testimony:

  There can no longer be any doubt that heavy exposure to televised violence is one of the causes of aggressive behaviour, crime and violence in society. The evidence comes from both the laboratory and real-life studies. Television violence affects youngsters of all ages, of both genders, at all socio-economic levels and all levels of intelligence. The effect is not limited to children who are already disposed to being aggressive and is not restricted to this country. The fact that we get this same finding of a relationship between television violence and aggression in children in study after study, in one country after another, cannot be ignored. The causal effect of television violence on aggression, even though it is not very large, exists. It cannot be denied or explained away. We have demonstrated this causal effect outside the laboratory in real-life among many different children. We have come to believe that a vicious cycle exists in which television violence makes children more aggressive and these aggressive children turn to watching more violence to justify their own behaviour." (p. 1)

  So too, the recent report by the American Psychological Association Task Force on Television and Society (Huston, et al., 1992) adds: "...the behaviour patterns established in childhood and adolescence are the foundation for lifelong patterns manifested in adulthood" (p. 57).

  The multiple discussions and communication strategies proposed in this project are designed to resolve these differing interpretations, both among social scientists and across the fields of mental health and journalism. The harmonic convergence of viewpoints and interpretation of research findings developed through this proposal will greatly enhance public understanding.

  Furthermore, the recent summary (released in August, 1993) of the American Psychological Association Commission on Violence and Youth--Violence & Youth: psychology's Response--confirms the findings noted above and reaffirms the need to consider ways to reduce the level of violence in all media. In particular, the APA Commission suggests the development of rating systems for television programs and videotapes that would move beyond the existing rating system used by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) by focusing on more relevant behavioural descriptors and indicators of potential harm to children and youth. Indeed, other organisations, such as Media Scope, have suggested reviews of the rating system in the context of experiences in other countries where ratings are more attuned to the special needs of children (Federman, 1993). In addition to ratings issues, the APA Commission directed two strong recommendations for policy change to the Federal Communications Commission:

  "We call upon the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to review, as a condition for license renewal, the programming and outreach efforts and accomplishments of television stations in helping to solve the problem of youth violence. This recommendation is consistent with the research evidence indicating television's potential to broadcast stations to 'serve the educational and informational needs of children,' both in programming and in outreach activities designed to enhance the educational value of programming. We also call on the FCC to institute rules that would require broadcasters, cable operators and other telecasters to avoid programs containing an excessive amount of dramatised violence during 'child viewing hours' between 6 am and 10 p.m." (American Psychological Association, 1993, pp. 77-78)
  

  To be sure, most of the research reviewed above is based upon a broad conception of media influence rooted in social learning theory. So too, there are alternative conceptions of media influence and viewer response, such as uses and gratifications theory (Kratz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1974; Kippax & Murray, 1980), that place greater emphasis on the active role of the viewer in determining the effects of media through selective use. Also, there are a number of scholars who have offered alternative interpretations of some of the research on television violence. For example, Cook and his colleagues (Cook, Kendzierski, & Thomas, 1983) point out some cautionary notes in interpreting the range of studies reviewed by the NIMH in 1982 report on Television and Behaviour and McGuire (1986) expressed strong concern about the overemphasis on the powerful effects of television. These are important tempering views and they need to be understood in the context of the large body of research findings noted above. And yet, one must not dismiss the extensive, cumulative evidence of potential harmful effect associated with viewing violence in film, video, and television.

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  United States Congress, Senate Committee of the Judiciary, Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency (1965b). Effects on young people of violence and crime portrayed on television. Hearings, 88th Congress, 2nd session, July 30, 1964. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office.

  United States Congress, Senate Committee of the Judiciary, Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency (1966). Effects on young people of violence and crime portrayed on television. 88th Congress, 2nd session, and 89th Congress, 1st session, October 15, 1965. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office.

  Williams, T.M. (1986). The impact of television: A natural experiment in three communities. New York: Academic Press.

  Wilson, B.J., Linz, D., & Randall, B. (1990). Applying social science research to film ratings: A shift from offensive to harmful effects. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 34, 443-468.

  Wood, W., Wong, F.Y., & Chachere, J.G. (1991). Effects of media violence on viewers' aggression in unconstrained social interaction." Psychological Bulletin, 109(3), 371-383.

  Worchel, S., Hardy, T.W., & Hurley, R. (1976). The effects of commercial interruption of violent and non-violent films on viewer's subsequent aggressiveness. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,12 (2), 220-232.

  Zillman, D. (1971). Excitation transfer in communication-mediated aggressive behaviour. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 7, 419-434.

  JOHN P. MURRAY John P. Murray, Ph.D. is Professor and Director of the School of Family Studies and Human Services at Kansas State University. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and recent President of its Division of Child Youth and Family Services. Dr. Murray's interest in television and society is reflected in nearly 30 years of research, teaching and public policy concerning children, youth and families including recent service on the Advisory Board of Mediascope, a Los Angeles-based organisation working to reduce the effects of media violence. In the late 1960's and early 70's, Dr. Murray served as Research Co-ordinator for the Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behaviour at the National Institute of Mental Health resulting in the landmark Surgeon General's report on television violence in 1972. Subsequently, he taught in the School of Behavioural Sciences at Macquarie University in Sydney where he conducted research on the effects of the introduction of television in the Australian "outback." His concern about the impact of television has continued during appointments at the University of Michigan, the Boys Town Centre for the Study of Youth Development, and Kansas State University. Over the years, Dr. Murray has produced 10 books and more than 80 articles on children's television, including his 1992 book, "Big World, Small Screen: The Role of Television in American Society" (University of Nebraska Press).

And as many as 25 percent of 3-years-olds are also sitting in front of the television at least that much.

This is all in the face of the American Academy of Paediatrics' guidelines saying that kids under 2 shouldn't be watching TV at all and those between 2 and 5 should be strictly limited to two hours a day.

"These guidelines are not just for television," says Dr. Daniel Broughton, a paediatrician at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and a member of the paediatricians' group committee that devises such guidelines. "Young children should be limited in the total amount of time exposed to all media, including videos, video games, and the Internet, not just television."

These findings about the television viewing habits of young kids were presented today at the Paediatric Academic Societies annual meeting in Baltimore, Md. The researchers surveyed 2,858 families nationwide.

Television Interferes With Learning

The problem for kids 2 years old and younger, says Broughton, is they are at a critical stage in their development in which they require interaction and stimulation to learn.

"Young kids want to interact with their environment," he says, "but television doesn't interact back. That can be very frustrating for young kids. Rather than actively participating in their surroundings, too much television teaches kids to sit back and passively receive what is being offered."

Youngest kids also cannot distinguish what is real from what isn't. "To them, television is just as real as anything else in their world, such as playing with a parent or a sibling," Broughton says. "They don't have the skills to interpret something they see on TV as being fantasy or make-believe."

While older kids ages 3 to 5 have a better understanding of what they see on TV, he says they don't necessarily realize that much of what they watch is designed to sell them products and a lifestyle.

Why So Much TV?

"This study should at the very least raise the question for parents of 'how much television is my child watching - and why?' " says Dr. Robert Kahn, a paediatrician at Children's Hospital Medical Centre of Cincinnati and one of the study's authors.

"Indirectly, one must also ask what is it that communities are not providing that makes infants [and toddlers] watch [so much] television. The question is as much about what these children are not doing in those hours [that they watch TV] as what they are doing," Kahn says.

"As these kids get older, all this time spent in front of the television and the computer pulls them away from activities that require them to interact with other people and with their surroundings," says Broughton.

"Kids need to be stimulated in ways that engage them through interaction with people and books and games, and in ways that teach them creativity and allow them to be physically active."

He says that one of the biggest problems with television is that it has the potential to compromise how young kids learn and relate to the world around them.

Broughton says neither he nor his AAP colleagues advocate people get rid of their televisions and computers, but he says parents need to control what and how much their kids watch.  

Selin Tuysuzoglu contributed to this report.

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Washington, DC—Today National PTA President Lois Jean White expressed support for the coin-operated video game industry’s implementation of the Coin-Operated Video Game Parental Advisory System. "The National PTA is pleased to see voluntary effort by the amusement machine equipment industry to provide parents with content information about the video games children play so that they may decide what is appropriate for their families."

"The advisory system is a crucial starting point," said White. "Our organisation encourages the continuation of such initiatives and believes the next step for the industry is to reduce the number of video games with violent themes. We thank Senators Lieberman and Kohl for keeping the issue of video game content in the public spotlight."

Studies show that violent video games can raise children’s levels of aggression and suppress their inclination to engage in pro-social behaviours. The National PTA continues to work to educate and increase the awareness of the impact of violent video games, television content, and other interactive media. The organisation actively supports efforts to end the violence in video games and other media that desensitise consumers to the value of life.

The National PTA is the largest volunteer child advocacy organisation in the United States. A not-for-profit organisation of parents, educators, students, and other citizens active in their schools and communities, the PTA is a leader in reminding our nation of its obligations to children. Membership in the National PTA is open to anyone who is concerned with the health, education, and welfare of children and youth. For more information on National PTA membership, please call the Membership Department at (800) 307-4782, or visit the National PTA’s website at www.pta.org.

North Carolina Coalition for Pulling the Plug on Media Violence via PR NEWSWIRE

Governor Hunt will kick off a week long campaign to remind parents to make smart choices in television viewing. The Governor's kick-off will take place Monday, October 21st (1996) at 1 p.m. at the Governor's Mansion.

The week is sponsored by the North Carolina Coalition for Pulling the Plug on Media Violence. The Coalition is a grassroots non-profit organisation made up of more than 35 child advocacy groups throughout the state. Its goal is to raise awareness about the negative impact of violence on TV and in video games.

The Coalition does not advocate or oppose specific programs. Instead, during the "Pull the Plug Week," the Coalition offers common-sense suggestions reviewing family use of television and video games. Flyers and bookmarks with those suggestions will be distributed to more than 800,000 K-5 public school students and their parents throughout the state.

Suggestions From The American Academy Of Paediatrics:

1. Set Limits: Be aware of how much television your children are watching. Then limit viewing to 1-2 hours each day. Take time together to talk about how violence and guns are glamorised on TV and in video games.
   
2. Plan: After limiting TV use, families can work together to choose appropriate programs. Paediatricians recommend using a TV guide or newspaper to help with selections. The set should be turned on only for quality programs and turned off then they're over.
   
3. Participate: Parents are the most important role models for their children. In our society, television is the second most important source of information. Watch shows together and review what video games the kids are playing. Let them know your feelings about violence on TV and seek their help in making a change in your family's TV and video game use.
   
4. Get Help: Many groups help raise awareness about the impact of violent programming on TV. Contact local PTA to find out about National PTA programs and pamphlets addressing television viewing.

The Effects of Violent Television Viewing

• 22-34% of young male felons imprisoned for committing violent crimes (homicide, rape, assault) report having consciously imitated crime techniques watched on TV. (Journal of American Medical Association - Studies in Violence and Television)
• All Canadian and US studies of the effect of prolonged childhood exposure to television show a positive relationship between earlier exposure to TV violence and later physical aggressiveness. (Public communication and behaviour - Academic Press)
• The critical period of exposure to television is pre-adolescent childhood. (American Academy of Paediatrics)
• Investigators at four Universities randomly sampled 2,500 hours of fictional entertainment from 2,693 cable network programs over 20 weeks in 1994-1995. 57% of programs studied had harmful depiction of violence. (Mediascope study by Cable Industry)
• Studies conclude viewing certain programs of violence can increase aggression in children, make them more fearful and less trusting, and desensitise them to violent behaviour by other people. (National TV Violence Study)

Although Media violence is not the only cause of violence in our state, it is the single most easily remediable contributing factor.

For further information on "Pull the Plug Week," contact

Pull The Plug On Media Violence (A North Carolina Organisation)
http://www.limitv.org/pulltheplug/about.htm
 

LimiTV
P.O. Box 52122
Raleigh, NC 27612
Phone: 1-888-LimiTV3
Fax: 1-919-782-4198
email: info@LimiTV.org

Sen. Bob Dole called on the entertainment industry this week to clean up its act to "help our nation maintain the innocence of our children." He isn't the first to chastise Hollywood for producing movies, TV programming and music promoting "loveless" sex and graphic violence. A growing number of politicians and parents believe it's time industry leaders curtail wanton eroticism and bloodshed. Dole, the Senate majority leader, accused film and music executives of hiding behind "the lofty language of free speech in order to profit from the debasing of America." He continued: "The mainstreaming of deviancy must come to an end, but it will only stop when the leaders of the entertainment industry recognise and shoulder their responsibility."

Since the issue has been forcefully moved onto the national agenda, politicians of all persuasions have taken pot-shots at Hollywood. In his State of the Union address President Clinton drew a standing ovation from the assembled members of Congress when he criticised the "incessant, repetitive, mindless violence and irresponsible conduct that permeates our media all the time." At the request of Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, the Citizens Task Force on TV Violence, which includes 28 national organisations representing medical professionals, parents, educators and law enforcement officials, submitted seven recommendations to the administration to reduce media violence. She assured the group that "regulation of violence is constitutionally permissible." During her tenure, former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders called for a national summit to end violence in TV programming. She told the House Telecommunications and Finance Subcommittee that "by portraying violence as the normal means of conflict resolution the media gives youth the message that violence is socially acceptable, 'cool' and the best way to resolve problems."

"The average child, ages 2 to 11, watches 28 hours of TV each week . . .," said Elders. By high school graduation, a student has spent 15,000 hours watching television to 11,000 in the classroom, and has witnessed 250,000 acts of violence on TV and in movies. "The tragedy about Saturday morning cartoons," she said, is that "there are 20 to 30 acts of violence per hour." Indeed, more than 1,000 studies since 1955 have linked media violence and aggressive behaviour. Despite increasing concern about its effect on children, however, the number of violent incidents continue to rise. A study by the Centre for Media and Public Affairs chronicled all the violent acts in a day's broadcasting in April 1994 on the four major networks, PBS and the four biggest cable networks. It found that compared to the same study conducted in 1992, the number of violent scenes jumped 41 percent, which translates to 15 violent scenes per channel each hour.

A national survey conducted by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University found that 55 percent of those polled want the federal government to regulate how much sex and violence appears on television. That same poll found that 84 percent of parents with children living at home feel they must act as "gate keepers" over what their offspring are allowed to watch. Even as they debate the issue, Americans acknowledge they are being desensitised by media violence. Fully 78 percent of Americans think "television shows so much violence that people grow up not being shocked by it," according to a study by the Times Mirror Centre for People and the Press.

Television industry leaders have initiated self-regulatory assessments of the sex and violence content of their programming. Critics, however, argue that by promising to deliver less promiscuity, blood and gore in TV programming and by airing news advisories about programs unsuitable for children, Hollywood merely seeks to forestall action by Congress. The counter-response from the industry is to trot out coalitions denouncing legislative threats as "steps toward government censorship which would infringe upon the First Amendment's right of free speech." Congress may not have the will or the authority to try and balance the government's interest in protecting children against the interest of adults in viewing violent programs. Perhaps it all boils down to this: For children, less TV and less exposure to violence are better. The American Academy of Paediatrics recommends that paediatricians advise parents to limit their children's television viewing to one to two hours per day. While waiting for corrective measures from Congress and the industry, parents still have an obligation to provide alternatives to the electronic baby-sitter. When all else fails, pull the plug.

The Research Showed children who watch a lot of violence on television are:

• more likely  to become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others.
• more fearful of the world around them.
• more likely to behave in aggressive ways toward others.
• more likely to act out the violence they see on TV in playing.
• more likely to commit violent acts.
• less bothered by violence in general.
• more likely to eventually commit crimes.

Kids who watched violent programs were slower to intervene or to call for help when they saw younger children fighting or playing destructively than kids who watched non-violent ones.

Studies by George Gerbner, Ph.D., at the University of Pennsylvania, showed that children's TV shows contain about 20 violent acts each hour.

Another study determined that children's TV show had about four times more violent acts than occurred in general audience programming.

Children have often been observed behaving differently after they've watched violent programs. In a study by Pennsylvania State University, "about 100 preschool children were observed both before and after watching television; some watched cartoons that had a lot of aggressive and violent acts in them, and 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 non-violent ones." "Children who watched the violent shows, even 'just funny' cartoons, were more likely to hit out at their playmates, argue, disobey class rules, leave tasks unfinished,  than those who watched the non-violent programs," says Aletha Huston, Ph.D., now at the University of Kansas.

Leonard Eron, Ph.D., and his associates at the University of Illinois, found that "children who watched many hours of TV violence when they were in elementary school tended to also show a higher level of aggressive behaviour when they became teenagers." By observing these kids until they were 30 years old, Dr. Eron found that "the ones who'd watched a lot of TV when they were eight years old were more likely to be arrested and prosecuted for criminal acts as adults."

1992, the American Psychological Association's Task Force on Television and Society published a report called, Big World, Small Screen: The Role of Television in American Society, that confirms  the harmful effects of TV violence.

Conversely, studies show that programs that demonstrate helping, caring and cooperation can influence children to become more kind and considerate.

The U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher recently released a report on youth violence which found that: "Exposure to violent media plays an important causal role in this societal problem" of youth violence, the draft report states. "From a public-health perspective, today's [media] consumption patterns are far from optimal. And for many children they are clearly harmful."
   The LA Times reported(1) that the study found that: "Men who as boys had watched violence most frequently, that study found, had "pushed, grabbed or shoved their spouse" at twice the rate of other men and had been convicted of crimes at three times the rate of other men. Similar effects were found for women.
     In another study cited by the authors, college students who played the violent video game "Marathon 2" generated 43% more aggressive responses in later tests than those who played a non-violent game. And in another study, researchers found that young black men who watched a violent rap music video were more likely to endorse the use of violence in a hypothetical conflict situation than those who watched a non-violent rap video."
     "The scientific evidence is murky. The conclusions of some of these people don't measure up," said Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America. Valenti added that many violence studies are flawed because they are usually done in laboratories, and that it is impossible to predict future behaviour based on exposure to violence."
     "You can be a football player and be aggressive. That doesn't mean that when you grow up you want to blow somebody's head off," Valenti said.(1)

From the National Institute on Media and the Family:

• By the time an average child (one who watches two to four hours of television daily) leaves elementary school, he or she will have witnessed 8,000 murders and over 100,000 other acts of violence (Huston, 1992).
• By the time a child is 18 years old, he or she will witness (with average viewing time) 200,000 acts of violence including 40,000 murders (Huston, 1992).
• On an individual day, there are about 5 to 6 violent acts per hour on prime-time television, and 20 to 25 acts of violence on Saturday morning children's television (Gerbner, 1990).
• Weekly, in the United States, this adds up to about 188 hours of violent programs or about 15% of the program time (Huesmann, 1992).
• Many popular R-rated films available on video contain far more violence than seen on commercial television.
• Children with VCR or cable access have seen more R-rated films than their non-cable, non-VCR counterparts (Huston, 1992).
• Since 1955, reports, studies and congressional testimonies by experts in the field have overwhelming concluded that "the mass media are significant contributors to the aggressive behaviour and aggression related attitudes of many children, adolescents and adults" (Surgeon General, 1972; National Institute of Mental Health, 1982; American Psychological Association, 1992).
• Two large meta analysis studies have been conducted on research linking media violence to aggression in children. One looked at 67 studies and over 30,000 subjects (Andison, 1977). The other looked at 230 studies and almost 100,000 subjects (Hearold, 1986). Both supported a number of conclusions: "First, there is a positive association between televised violence exposure and behaviour. Second, exposure to violent programming not only increases aggressive behaviour, but is associated with lower levels of prosocial behaviour."

The National Association for the Education of Young Children focuses on three effects of media violence on children:

• "Children may become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others" (desensitisation).
• Children "may be more likely to behave in aggressive or harmful ways towards others" (increases aggression).
• Children "may become more fearful of the world around them" (Mean World syndrome).

Many factors in the portrayal of media violence contribute to its affect on children and teens (Comstock, 1994):

• Is the aggressive behaviour on screen rewarded or punished?
• Is the violence gratuitous, is it justified or does it lack consequences?
• Does the viewer identify with the aggressor or the victim?
• Does the viewer become engaged with or aroused by the violence on screen?
• What is the age of the child? Although violence affects children of all ages, middle childhood, ages 8 to 12, seem particularly sensitive.
• What is the total amount of television watched?
• Does the child see television violence as realistic?

From the National PTA:

The final year of the three year National Television Violence Study, released April 16, 1998, finds that TV violence continues to pose a serious risk of harm to children. Some of the major findings were:

• There was no change in the overall level of violence in reality programming across the three seasons. In the 1996-97 season, 39 percent of reality programs contained visually depicted violence compared with 37 percent in the 1995-96 season and 39 percent in the 1994-95 season.
• Ratings based on age-like those used for movies and not television shows-actually increased children's interest in restricted programs, but none of the content-based systems had this effect.
• The violence on television is still frequently glamorised. Physical aggression is frequently condoned. Over 37% of violent programs feature "bad" characters who are never or rarely punished anywhere in the plot, and good characters are hardly ever criticized for violence. 75% of violent scenes contain no form of punishment for the aggression. This glamorisation of violence poses risks for the audience. Children will imitate violent characters who are heroic or attractive.
• Plots that can encourage aggression in young children are concentrated in programs and channels targeted to young viewers. In a typical week, there are over 800 violent portrayals that qualify as high risk for children under 7. Cartoons are primarily responsible.
• Plots that can encourage aggression in older children and teens are concentrated in movies and dramas. Unlike younger children, adolescents are capable of discounting portrayals of violence that are highly fantastic, such as cartoons. Older viewers are susceptible primarily to more realistic portrayals of violence. In a typical week, there are nearly 400 episodes of violence that are considered high risk for teens.
• Most violence on television remains sanitized. Violence is typically shown with little or no harm to the victim. In fact, more than half of the violent incidents on television depict no physical injury or pain to the victim.

Social science research conducted over the past 40 years supports the conclusion that viewing violent television programming has negative consequences for children, and research suggests three areas in which watching violent television programs can impact young viewers:

• Media violence can encourage children to learn aggressive behaviour and attitudes.
• Media violence can cultivate fearful or pessimistic attitudes in children about the non-television world.
• Media violence can desensitise children to real world and fantasy violence.

Some statistics from the Centre for Media Education (CME):

• Most children watch an average of 3 to 4 hours of TV per day, approximately 28 hours each week.
• Each year, most children spend about 1500 hours in front of the TV and 900 hours in the classroom.
• By age 70, most people will have spent about 10 years watching TV.
• Prime-time TV contains about 5 violent acts per hour compared to an average of 26 violent acts per hour during Saturday morning children's TV.

1 - Surgeon Gen. Links TV, Real Violence - Jeff Leeds; Los Angeles Times: Jan. 17, 2001
*Andison, F.S. "TV violence and viewer aggression: A cumulation of study results". Public Opinion Quarterly, 1977, 41, pp. 314-331.
*Comstock, G.A. and Paik, H. "The effects of television violence on antisocial behaviour: A meta-analysis," Communication Research, 1994, 21, pp. 516-546.
*Hearold, S. "A synthesis of 1043 effects of television on social behaviour" in Comstock's Public Communication and Behaviour (Vol. 1), San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1986.
*Huesmann, L.R. Violence in the mass media, paper presented at the Third International Conference on Film Regulation, London, England, 1992.
*Huston, A.C., et al. Big world, small screen: The role of television in American society. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.
*Gerbner, G. and Signorielli, N. Violence profile, 1967 through 1988-89: Enduring patterns, Annenberg School of Communication, 1990.
*National Institute of Mental Health. Television and behaviour: ten years of scientific progress and implications for the eighties, summary report (Vol. 1). Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982.
*National Association for the Education of Young Children. Young children, 1990, 45(5), pp.18-21.
*Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behaviour. Television and growing up: The impact of televised violence. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972.

INTRODUCTION

The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) position statement on media violence and children (1990) reports that violence in the media has increased since 1980 and continues to increase, particularly since the Federal Communication Commission's decision to deregulate children's commercial television in 1982. The NAEYC statement cites the following examples: * Air time for war cartoons increased from 1.5 hours per week in 1982 to 43 hours per week in 1986. * In 1980, children's programs featured 18.6 violent acts per hour and now have about 26.4 violent acts each hour.

According to an American Psychological Association task force report on television and American society (Huston, et al., 1992), by the time the average child (i.e., one who watches two to four hours of television daily) leaves elementary school, he or she will have witnessed at least 8,000 murders and more than 100,000 other assorted acts of violence on television.

Indicating growing concern regarding the issue of television violence, recent commentaries in the Washington Post (Harwood, 1993; Will, 1993; "Televiolence," 1993) highlight: * a paper by Centerwall (1993) that examines several studies and argues that television violence increases violent and aggressive tendencies in young people and contributes to the growth of violent crime in the United States; * and a Times Mirror poll, reported in March 1993, that found that the majority of Americans feels that "entertainment television is too violent...that this is harmful to society...that we as a society have become desensitised to violence."

-----

This digest describes the overall pattern of the results of research on television violence and behaviour. Several variables in the relationship between television violence and aggression related to characteristics of the viewers and to the portrayal of violence are identified. Finally, concerns regarding the effects of television violence are summarised.

RESEARCH FINDINGS

The overall pattern of research findings indicates a positive association between television violence and aggressive behaviour. A Washington Post article (Oldenburg, 1992), states that "the preponderance of evidence from more than 3,000 research studies over two decades shows that the violence portrayed on television influences the attitudes and behaviour of children who watch it." Signorielli (1991) finds that: "Most of the scientific evidence...reveals a relationship between television and aggressive behaviour. While few would say that there is absolute proof that watching television caused aggressive behaviour, the overall cumulative weight of all the studies gives credence to the position that they are related. Essentially, television violence is one of the things that may lead to aggressive, antisocial, or criminal behaviour; it does, however, usually work in conjunction with other factors. As aptly put by Dorr and Kovaric (1980), television violence may influence 'some of the people some of the time'" (pp. 94-95).

CHARACTERISTICS OF VIEWERS

The following characteristics of viewers, summarised by Clapp (1988), have been shown to affect the influence of television violence on behaviour.

• * Age. "A relationship between television violence and aggression has been observed in children as young as 3 (Singer & Singer, 1981). Longitudinal data suggest that the relationship is much more consistent and substantial for children in middle childhood than at earlier ages (Eron and Huesmann, 1986). Aggression in early adulthood is also related to the amount of violence watched in middle childhood, although it is not related to the amount watched in early adulthood (Eron, Huesmann, Lefkowitz, & Walder, 1972). It has been proposed that there is a sensitive period between ages 8 and 12 during which children are particularly susceptible to the influence of television violence (Eron & Huesmann, 1986)" (pp. 64-65).
• * Amount of television watched. "Aggressive behaviour is related to the total amount of television watched, not only to the amount of violent television watched. Aggressive behaviour can be stimulated also by frenetic, hectic programming that creates a high level of arousal in children (Eron & Huesmann, 1986; Wright & Huston, 1983)" (p. 65).
• * Identification with television personalities. "Especially for boys, identification with a character substantially increases the likelihood that the character's aggressive behaviour will be modelled (Huesmann & Eron, 1986; Huesmann, Lagerspetz, & Eron, 1984)" (p. 65).
• * Belief that television violence is realistic. "Significant relationships have been found between children's belief that television violence is realistic, their aggressive behaviour, and the amount of violence that they watch (Huesmann, 1986; Huesmann & Eron, 1986)" (p. 65).
• * Intellectual achievement. "Children of lower intellectual achievement generally (1) watch more television, (2) watch more violent television, (3) believe violent television reflects real life, and (4) behave more aggressively (Huesmann, 1986)" (p. 65).

Comstock and Paik (1987, 1991) also identify the following factors that may increase the likelihood of television influence:

• * Viewers who are in a state of anger or provocation before seeing a violent portrayal.

• * Viewers who are in a state of frustration after viewing a violent portrayal, whether from an extraneous source or as a consequence of viewing the portrayal.

PORTRAYAL OF VIOLENCE

The following are factors related to how the violence is portrayed which may heighten the likelihood of television influence. Research on these factors is summarised by Comstock and Paik (1987, 1991):

• * Reward or lack of punishment for the portrayed perpetrator of violence.
• * Portrayal of the violence as justified.
• * Cues in the portrayal of violence that resemble those likely to be encountered in real life. For example, a victim in the portrayal with the same name or characteristics as someone towards whom the viewer holds animosity.
• * Portrayal of the perpetrator of violence as similar to the viewer.
• * Violence portrayed so that its consequences do not stir distaste or arouse inhibitions.
• * Violence portrayed as real events rather than events concocted for a fictional film.
• * Portrayed violence that is not the subject of critical or disparaging commentary.
• * Portrayals of violent acts that please the viewer.

• * Portrayals in which violence is not interrupted by violence in a light or humorous vein.
• * Portrayed abuse that includes physical violence and aggression instead of or in addition to verbal abuse.
• * Portrayals, violent or otherwise, that leave the viewer in a state of unresolved excitement.

Comstock and Paik (1991) argue that "these contingencies represent four dimensions: (a) efficacy (reward or lack of punishment); (b) normativeness (justified, consequenceless, intentionally hurtful, physical violence); (c) pertinence (commonality of cues, similarity to the viewer, absence of humorous violence); and (d) susceptibility (pleasure, anger, frustration, absence of criticism)" (pp. 255-256).

CONCERNS

Three major areas of concern regarding the effects of television violence are identified and discussed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (1990):

• * Children may become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others.

• * They may be more likely to behave in aggressive or harmful ways toward others.
• * They may become more fearful of the world around them.

Of these, Signorielli (1991) considers the third scenario to be the most insidious: "Research...has revealed that violence on television plays an important role in communicating the social order and in leading to perceptions of the world as a mean and dangerous place. Symbolic victimisation on television and real world fear among women and minorities, even if contrary to the facts, are highly related (Morgan, 1983). Analysis also reveals that in most subgroups those who watch more television tend to express a heightened sense of living in a mean world of danger and mistrust as well as alienation and gloom" (p. 96).

Another concern addressed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (1990) is the negative effect on children's play of viewing violent television: "In short, children who are frequent viewers of media violence learn that aggression is a successful and acceptable way to achieve goals and solve problems; they are less likely to benefit from creative, imaginative play as the natural means to express feelings, overcome anger, and gain self-control" (p. 19).

REFERENCES

Centerwall, B. S. (1993). Television and violent crime. THE PUBLIC INTEREST, 111, pp. 56-77.

Clapp, G. (1988). CHILD STUDY RESEARCH: CURRENT PERSPECTIVES AND APPLICATIONS. Lexington, MA: Lexington.

Comstock, G. & Paik, H. (1987). TELEVISION AND CHILDREN: A REVIEW OF RECENT RESEARCH. Syracuse, N.Y.: ERIC Clearinghouse on Information Resources. (ED 292 466).

Comstock, G. & Paik, H. (1991). TELEVISION AND THE AMERICAN CHILD. San Diego, CA: Academic.

Dorr, A., & Kovaric, P. (1980). Some of the people some of the time--But which people? In E. L. Palmer & A. Dorr (eds.), CHILDREN AND THE FACES OF TELEVISION: TEACHING, VIOLENCE, SELLING (pp. 183-199). New York: Academic.

Eron, L. D. & Huesmann, L. R. (1986). The role of television in the development of prosocial and antisocial behaviour. In D. Olweus, J. Block, & M. Radke-Yarrow (eds.), THE DEVELOPMENT OF ANTISOCIAL AND PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOUR: RESEARCH, THEORIES, AND ISSUES. New York: Academic.

Eron, L. D., Huesmann, L. R., Lefkowitz, M. M., & Walder, L. D. (1972). Does television violence cause aggression? AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST, 27, 253-63.

Harwood, R. (1993, April 17). Is TV to blame for violence? WASHINGTON POST, p. A23.

Huesmann, L. R. (1986). Psychological processes promoting the relation between exposure to media violence and aggressive behaviour by the viewer. JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES, 42, 125-139. (EJ 355 099)

Huesmann, L. R. & Eron, L. D. (1986). TELEVISION AND THE AGGRESSIVE CHILD: A CROSS-NATIONAL COMPARISON. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Huesmann, L. R., Lagerspetz, K., & Eron, L. D. (1984). Intervening variables in the TV violence-aggression relation: Evidence from two countries. DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 20(5), 746-777. (EJ 308 850)

Huston, A. C., Donnerstein, E., Fairchild, H., Fashbach, N. D., Katz, P. A., Murray, J. P., Rubinstein, E. A., Wilcox, B. L., Zuckerman, D., (1992). BIG WORLD, SMALL SCREEN: THE ROLE OF TELEVISION IN AMERICAN SOCIETY. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska.

Morgan, M. (1983). Symbolic victimisation and real-world fear. HUMAN COMMUNICATION RESEARCH, 9(2), 146-157. (EJ 272 383)

National Association for the Education of Young Children. (1990). NAEYC position statement on media violence in children's lives. YOUNG CHILDREN, 45(5), 18-21. (EJ 415 397)

Oldenburg, D. (1992, April 7). Primal screen-kids: TV violence and real-life behaviour. WASHINGTON POST, p. E5.

Signorielli, N. (1991). A SOURCEBOOK ON CHILDREN AND TELEVISION. New York: Greenwood.

Singer, J. L., & Singer, D. G. (1981). TELEVISION, IMAGINATION AND AGGRESSION: A STUDY OF PRE-SCHOOLERS. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Televiolence. (1993, April 17). WASHINGTON POST, p. A22.

Will, G. F. (1993, April 8). Yes, blame TV. WASHINGTON POST, p. A21.

Wright, J. C. & Huston, A. C. (1983). A matter of form: Potentials of television for young viewers. AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST, 38, 835- 43. (EJ 283 455)

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Marilyn E. Smith is Database Co-ordinator, ERIC Clearinghouse on Information & Technology, Syracuse University. December 1993.

ERIC Digests are in the public domain and may be freely reproduced and disseminated.

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This publication was prepared with funding from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, under contract no. RR93002009. The opinions expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of OERI or ED.

Contents

Executive Summary
Introduction
Infants (Children up to 18 Months):

• Extent of Attention Span for Watching Television
• Potential Effects of Television Violence
• Suggestions for Parents
• Endnotes

Toddlers (Children 18 Months to 3 Years Old):

• Approach to Watching Television
• Potential Effects of Television Violence
• Suggestions for Parents
• Suggestions for the Television Industry
• Endnotes

Early Childhood or Pre-school Age (Children Ages 3 to 5):

• Approach to Processing Information and Watching Television
• Attraction to Television Violence
• Preference for Cartoons
• Extent of Ability to Distinguish Reality from Fantasy
• Television Content that Pre-schoolers Find Scary
• Suggestions for Parents
• Suggestions for the Television Industry
• Endnotes

Middle Childhood or Elementary School Age (Children Ages 6 to 11):

• Television-viewing Habits
• Approach to Processing Information and Watching Television
• Particular Susceptibility to the Effects of Violent Television
• Ability to distinguish reality from fantasy
• Tendency to identify with aggressive heroes and engage in aggressive fantasies
• Expectations about gender-related reactions to violence
• Perception of the World from Watching Television
• Television Content that Children Find Scary
• Attraction to Horror Movies
• Suggestions for Parents
• Suggestions for the Television Industry
• Endnotes

Adolescence (Children Ages 12 to 17):

• Television-watching Habits
• Approach to Processing Information and Watching Television
• Susceptibility to Imitating Television Violence and Crime
• Perception of the World from Watching Television
• Attraction to Horror Movies, Music Videos and Violent Pornography
• Suggestions for Parents
• Suggestions for the Television Industry
• Endnotes

Conclusion
Appendix I: Effects of Television Violence on Especially Vulnerable Groups
Appendix II: Responses to Common Criticisms of Research on the Relationship between Television Violence and Aggression
Appendix III: Research on the Effects of Violent Video Games
References

Executive Summary

At different ages, children watch and understand television in different ways, depending on the length of their attention span, the way in which they process information, the amount of mental effort they invest, and their own life experiences. These variables must all be examined to gain an understanding of how television violence affects children at different ages.

Infants (children up to 18 months old) can pay attention to an operating television set for short periods of time, but such attention demands a great effort, and infants are usually more interested in their own daily activities. Even when they do direct their attention to the television, infants are likely missing most of what adults consider to be program content, experiencing it primarily as fragmented displays of light and sound, which they are intermittently able to group into meaningful combinations such as recognisable human or animal characters.

No research has focused specifically on how violent content affects infants, but there is some evidence that infants can imitate behaviour from television when that behaviour is presented in a simple, uncluttered and instructional manner.

Children do not become full-fledged "viewers" until around the age of two-and-a-half. As toddlers, they begin to pay more attention to the television set when it is on, and they develop a limited ability to extract meaning from television content. They are likely to imitate what they see and hear on television.

The viewing patterns children establish as toddlers will influence their viewing habits throughout their lives. Since toddlers have a strong preference for cartoons and other programs that have characters who move fast, there is considerable likelihood that they will be exposed to large amounts of violence.

At the pre-school age (three to five years old), children begin watching television with an "exploration" approach. They actively search for meaning in the content, but are still especially attracted to vivid production features, such as rapid character movement, rapid changes of scene, and intense or unexpected sights and sounds.

Because television violence is accompanied by vivid production features, pre-schoolers are predisposed to seek out and pay attention to violence — particularly cartoon violence. It is not the violence itself that makes the cartoons attractive to pre-schoolers, but the accompanying vivid production features. With this preference for cartoons, pre-schoolers are being exposed to a large number of violent acts in their viewing day. Moreover, they are unlikely to be able to put the violence in context, since they are likely to miss any subtlety conveyed mitigating information concerning motivation and consequences. Pre-schoolers behave more aggressively than usual in their play after watching any high-action exciting television content, but especially after watching violent television.

Elementary school age (ages six to eleven) is considered a critical period for understanding the effects of television on aggression. At this stage, children develop the attention span and cognitive ability to follow continuous plots, to make inferences about implicit content, and to recognise motivations and consequences to characters' actions. However, they are also investing increasingly less mental effort overall in their viewing, and it is mental effort that determines whether children will process television information deeply or merely react to it in an unfocused, superficial way.

By age eight, children are more likely to be sensitive to important moderating influences of television content, and will not become more aggressive themselves if the violence they see is portrayed as evil, as causing human suffering, or as resulting in punishment or disapproval. However, they are especially likely to show increased aggression from watching violent television if they believe the violence reflects real life, if they identify with a violent hero (as boys often do), or if they engage in aggressive fantasies.

At ages 6 to 11, elementary school children still watch cartoons but also begin watching more adult or family-oriented programming than they did when they were younger. They also develop a surprising taste for horror movies, perhaps deliberately scaring themselves in an attempt to overcome their own fears. However, to the extent that they are desensitising themselves to fear and violence, they are also very likely becoming more tolerant of violence in the real world.

During adolescence (age 12 to 17), the middle school to high school years, children become capable of high levels of abstract thought and reasoning, although they rarely use these abilities when watching television, continuing to invest little mental effort. They watch less television than they did when they were younger, and watch less with their families. Their interests at this age tend to revolve around independence, sex and romance, and they develop a preference for music videos, horror movies, and (boys particularly) pornographic videos, which deal with these topics, although usually in negative ways.

Adolescents in middle school and high school are much more likely than younger children to doubt the reality of television content and much less likely to identify with television characters. The small percentage of those who continue to believe in the reality of television and to identify with its violent heroes are the ones likely to be more aggressive, especially if they continue to fantasise about aggressive-heroic themes.

Their superior abstract reasoning abilities and their tendency at this age to challenge conventional authority make adolescents particularly susceptible to imitating some kinds of television violence, crime and portrayals of suicide. However, these imitative acts affect only a small percentage of adolescents.

In a world in which violent television is pervasive and children are susceptible to its effects, parents are the best mediators of their children's viewing.

There are a number of ways parents can limit their children's exposure to violence. Restricting the amount and types of programs children watch is probably the most effective and common means of mediation for children of all ages. However, there are also strategies that are specifically appropriate for children at different ages.

Under normal conditions, parents probably do not need to worry too much about their infants being negatively influenced by television, although they might want to limit their exposure to violence or other portrayals it might be dangerous for an infant to imitate.

Limiting exposure to this kind of TV content is especially wise with toddlers, who are even more prone to imitating what they see on television. Another highly influential action parents can take for toddlers is to examine and regulate their own viewing behaviour, since toddlers are highly influenced by their parents' viewing habits.

Parental mediation to reduce a pre-schooler's aggression (as well as fears from what they see on television) can include viewing with the child, commenting on content, providing distraction or comfort if the child is frightened, and encouraging or discouraging behaviour they see pre-schoolers imitating from television.

While restricting viewing is an effective form of parental mediation for younger elementary school aged children, for older children it is more useful for parents to discuss, explain, and challenge television. By doing so, parents can help their children to interpret television material and overcome the effect televised violence has on their attitudes and behaviour. Another positive effect of these strategies is that children invest more mental effort in their watching, becoming more critical and analytical viewers.

Encouraging adolescents to express their opinions and to analyse and question television content is a parental strategy that has been found to reduce adolescents' fears and aggressiveness, as well as to improve their critical approach to the medium.

There is an unfortunate lack of non-violent educational and entertaining programming specifically geared to children. It would not be a difficult challenge to come up with non-violent programming, since it is not the violence itself that attracts viewers. The television industry would do well to create programming specifically aimed at child audiences, taking into account the various approaches to watching television and the interests of each age group.

Although toddlers do not understand a great deal of program content, creating educational programming using such features as animation, children's or women's voices on the sound track, and simplified movements and camera work will likely win them as loyal viewers. A habit of watching educational programs (as opposed to cartoons) will reduce their exposure to violent content and make it more likely that they will watch and benefit from educational television later on, as pre-schoolers.

For pre-schoolers, effective programming would include the use of vivid production features and "child-directed speech" (simple sentences spoken slowly, referring to objects that are actually being shown on the screen, and with repetition). These features will improve their attention and understanding and can be used to highlight important features of program content, such as critical plot events.

The elementary school-aged audience has been called the "almost forgotten group" when it comes to targeted programming. Such programming could easily avoid violence, since children at this age are still more attracted to variability and tempo than to violence. Although boys, particularly, seek out male heroes who tend to be violent, it is actually the hero's power (not the violence) that is the attraction. Strong, yet positive, counterstereotypical television characters could be created to fit the bill, since these have proven to equally attract their interest, as effectively as violent heroes.

Programming for adolescents should avoid promoting rape myths and portraying violent behaviour that promises fun, "kicks," or instant notoriety. It might lessen the number of horror and pornographic videos that adolescents watch if television programming were provided that addresses their particular needs and interests.

It is certainly true that television violence does not account for all the causes of children's aggression, and it is also true that some children are a great deal more likely to be affected by television violence than others, and that it is these children who are likely to be potentially more aggressive anyway. But the effect of television violence leads these "at-risk" children to be even more aggressive than they would otherwise be. And although the group especially at risk might be a minority of viewers, they are likely to be the majority of aggressors. This fact makes them, and the violent content of television, worthy of our attention.

Introduction

Psychological research has found that televised violence has numerous effects on the behaviour of children of different ages. These include the imitation of violence and crime seen on television (copycat violence)(1), reduced inhibitions against behaving aggressively(2), the "triggering" of impulsive acts of aggression (priming)(3), and the displacing of activities, such as socialising with other children and interacting with adults, that would teach children non-violent ways to solve conflicts(4). Television violence has also been found to have emotional effects on children. Children may become desensitised to real-life violence(5), they may come to see the world as a mean and scary place(6) or they may come to expect others to resort to physical violence to resolve conflicts(7). Although some early research(8), suggested that televised violence might allow viewers to vent destructive impulses through fantasy instead of acting them out against real-life targets, later findings have not supported this so-called "catharsis" hypothesis.

Most social concern, and therefore most research, has focused on children, although virtually all of the effects mentioned above have also been found in older adolescents and adults. None of the effects is believed to be specific to a certain age. That said, an analysis of almost 300 studies in 1986(9) found that pre-schoolers tend to demonstrate more physical aggression and other anti-social behaviour as a result of watching violence on TV than do older children up to about 9 or 10 years old. During adolescence, the effect of violent television (especially on physical aggression) increases for boys and decreases quite dramatically for girls.

An examination of how television violence affects children who are of different ages must also look at other differences among these children. Children differ in the content they watch, the context in which they watch it, the way in which they watch it, and the meaning they find in it. They also differ in their experiences of the world and of television as a medium. It is in looking at all these differences that we can gain a true understanding of the effects of television violence upon young viewers.

Endnotes

1-for example, Bandura, 1965.
2-for example, Bandura, 1973.
3-for example, Josephson, 1987.
4-for example, Joy, Kimball and Zabrack, 1986.
5-for example, Thomas, Horton and Lippincott, 1977.
6-for example, Singer, Singer and Rapaczynski, 1984.
7-for example, Leifer and Roberts, 1972.
8-Feshback and Singer, 1971.
9-Hearold, 1986.

Infants (children up to 18 months)

Extent of Attention Span for Watching Television

By the time infants are three months old, they can pay attention to an operating television set for short periods of time, if an adult physically directs them toward the television set. But paying attention seems to demand a great effort. Almost all of the infants in one study who looked at a television for at least half of a six-minute cartoon presentation later showed signs of tiredness, such as crying, fussiness, and yawning(1).

By six-months old, infants can direct their own attention to the TV and maintain that attention for as long as 16 minutes, if they are placed in a play pen near the set with nothing interesting to do(2). But infants often do have something more interesting to do than watch TV. More compelling activities include feeding, climbing furniture, and having their diapers changed(3). American studies have shown that although infants are exposed to television for about two hours a day(4), they pay attention to the set for less than 10 percent of that time(5) and orient their bodies toward the screen very infrequently(6).

Infants in Japan appear to be more attentive TV viewers than infants in the United States. (Comparable studies have not been done in Canada.) Exposure of American infants seems to be largely "incidental," occurring only because the infant is in the same room as other family members who are watching the TV. In contrast, according to a survey in Japan, mothers there make an effort to ensure that their infants watch educational television during its scheduled broadcast times. It has been found that Japanese infants, like American infants, are exposed to television programming for about two hours a day(7). But these infants are reported by their mothers to be regular viewers of With Mother, a popular broadcasting program for pre-schoolers. Almost 80 percent of the mothers surveyed reported evidence of involved viewing, such as imitating hand clapping. Such loyal and involved TV viewing is in sharp contrast to the low levels of attention reported by some U.S. researchers(8), but quite consistent with observations of parents who deliberately watch Sesame Street and other children's programming with their infants(9). Unlike infants merely exposed to other family members' choices, these children showed signs of program knowledge and involvement, such as pointing at familiar characters on the screen, as early as 10 months of age.

What benefit are infants getting from television? A study in Japan that tracked children's eye movements found that one-year-olds pay visual attention to parts of a program segment that feature music and frequent changes of scene or character, but not to the parts of the segment that portray plot events(10). Three- year-olds, in contrast, actively search the screen for information during program segments that contain plot information. This comparison suggests that when one-year-olds "watch" television they likely miss most of what adults consider to be the program content, experiencing it primarily as fragmented displays of light and sound. With effort, they may occasionally group simple combinations of these displays into a meaningful image, such as a speaking or moving character.

When Japanese mothers report that their infants copy such actions as hand clapping and callisthenics from television programs, it suggests that children will imitate television characters almost as soon as they are able to distinguish these characters from the surrounding background. Of course, it is also possible that many of these infants were responding to or imitating their parents' or siblings' actions, since the reports are based on observations of infants watching television in naturalistic settings with other family members.

Another study provides further reason to take seriously parents' reports of infant learning from television(11). Slightly older infants of 14 months were found to pay attention to and imitate a televised demonstration of an adult using a toy in a novel way that was a relatively complex sequence of actions. (No parental direction was possible in the study.) It is worth mentioning that the demonstration was done with black and white film, with no background music and with a live actor – a format not usually attractive to children. It did have the advantage of being extremely simple in its presentation, with no other movement on the screen, and it was shown to children in a laboratory setting where there was little else the infants could do. Remarkably, these 14-month-olds imitated the behaviour they had seen on the screen even if they had to delay their imitation (because the toy was not available) until a day later. It appears that infants can imitate behaviour from television when the behaviour is presented in a simple, uncluttered, and instructional manner.

Potential Effects of Television Violence

No research has focused on the specific effects of television violence on infants. Since infants show so little interest in what adults consider to be content, it might be argued that violence is largely irrelevant to them. It has been shown that infants can imitate televised behaviour, but only with material that is simple, uncluttered, and presented in an instructional manner. Violence on television does not have these characteristics. On the other hand, infants have been found to copy highly visual activities such as hand-clapping and callisthenics, and television violence does include features like these that seem to attract the attention and interest of the otherwise undiscriminating one-year-old viewer (i.e., high levels of activity, changes of position, scene or character, and noise)(12).

Suggestions for Parents

Since there is some possibility that infants will imitate what they see on television, parents might want to limit their infants' exposure to television violence or other portrayals of actions that would be dangerous for an infant to imitate. However, under normal conditions of exposing infants to television, parents probably do not need to worry much about their infants being negatively influenced. In fact, older infants may enjoy educational programming that is designed for pre-schoolers, and watching children's television may be a way for parents and children to have fun together and to share language, much like reading a picture book together(13). It has been found that parents who actively watched children's educational television with their infants and toddlers were frequently directing their child's attention to characters, actions, objects, and other features on the screen(14). They may well have been teaching these young viewers their very earliest lessons in how to watch television(15).

Endnotes

1Mizukami and Ishibashi, 1990.
2Hollenbech and Slaby, 1979.
3Lemish, 1984.
4Anderson, Lorch, Field, Collins and Nathan, 1986; Hollenbech, 1978.
5Anderson et al., 1986.
6Anderson and Levin, 1976.
7Kodaira, 1990, 1992.
8Anderson et al., 1986; Anderson and Lorch, 1983.
9Lemish, 1984.
10Takahashi, 1991. The program segment was specifically developed for children aged two and under, i.e., shorter and simpler than programs developed for pre-schoolers.
11Meltzoff, 1988.
12Takahashi, 1991.
13Lemish and Rice, 1986.
14Lemish and Rice, 1986.
15Wartella, 1986.

Toddlers (children 18 months to 3 years old)

Approach to Watching Television

At about the age of two and a half, children dramatically change their approach to television. Although they spend about the same amount of time near an operating set as younger children(1), they pay attention three or four times as much, to the point where they are paying attention for almost half the time the set is on. At this age, children also begin physically orienting themselves toward the set when it is on, even when they are playing or doing other activities. The change appears to be part of a more general development in children's ability to represent objects and actions internally as thoughts, words and memories. It is this developing ability that allows children to extract meaning from television content at this age(2).

With this development, children rather abruptly become established television viewers. By the time they are three years old, most children have a favourite program(3). They watch an average of two hours of television a day and show significant loyalty to particular types of programs, such as children's educational programs, action-adventure shows, situation comedies and game shows(4). Like older viewers, their program choices are based on program scheduling(5), but they also have strong preferences for cartoons and other programs that have characters who move fast(6), They are particularly likely to watch children's educational programs(7).

Potential Effects of Television Violence

Despite the lack of research on the specific effects of television violence on toddlers, we do know that they are capable of learning verbal and non-verbal behaviours from television. Toddlers will imitate both what they see on television(8) and what they hear, as evidenced by the children under age two who could recite complete phrases from soft drink advertisements(9).

At this age, children may establish television viewing patterns that will expose them to high levels of violent content throughout the rest of their childhood. It has been found that viewing patterns (both amount of watching and program type) established at the toddler stage persist into the pre-schooler age(10) as viewing patterns established at the pre-schooler stage persist into and through elementary school age years(11).

Suggestions for Parents

Children are highly influenced by their parents' viewing habits as they establish their own viewing patterns(12). One highly influential action parents can take, then, is to examine and regulate their own viewing behaviour. Because toddlers imitate what they see and hear on TV, it might also be wise for parents to prevent their children from being exposed to content that portrays actions (violent or otherwise) that might lead toddlers to harm themselves or others.

Suggestions for the Television Industry

University and industry researchers in Japan have conducted research to find out ways of improving toddlers' attention to and understanding of educational programming at the time they are becoming full-fledged television viewers (at around age two and a half)(13). The results suggest that it is relatively easy to produce content that attracts two-year-olds, but difficult to present such content in a way that two-year-olds understand.

Features that attracted the attention of two-year-olds included using animation, using children and large animals as characters, having children's voices on the sound track, and using a great deal of "active stationary movement" (activity done while remaining in the same part of the screen, such as waving the arms or jumping on the spot, without the use of panning or zooming in the camera work).

Techniques that appeared to improve two-year-olds' understanding of television content were simplifying the backgrounds, including more repetition, and making the main characters larger than the secondary characters. However, only 20 percent of two-year-olds demonstrated any comprehension of the material they were shown, and they were usually "older" two-year-olds (i.e., two years and seven months to just under three years old).

Since so few toddlers seem to understand what is being broadcast, even in simplified form, there would seem to be little direct educational gain from developing new programming especially for them. However, the availability of educational programming using the suggested features and techniques will likely win them as loyal viewers(14). Thus they will be more likely to watch these programs later, when the educational content becomes meaningful to them. A pattern of viewing educational television, as opposed to commercial cartoons, would reduce their exposure to violent content as well.

Endnotes

1Anderson et al., 1986; Kodaira, 1990, 1992.
2Anderson and Lorch, 1983; Kodaira, 1990; Takahashi, 1991.
3Lyle and Hoffman, 1972.
4Singer and Singer, 1981; Kodaira, 1992; Lemish and Rice, 1986.
5Singer and Singer, 1981; Huston, Wright et al., 1990.
6Huston and Wright, 1983.
7Huston, Wright et al., 1990; Kodaira, 1992; Lemish, 1984; Winick and Winick, 1979.
8Kodaira, 1992; Lemish, 1984; McCall et al., 1977; Meltzoff, 1988.
9Lemish and Rice, 1986.
10Singer and Singer, 1981.
11Huston, Wright et al., 1990; Tangney and Feshbach, 1988; Williams and Boyes, 1986.
12Huston, Wright et al., 1990; St. Peters et al., 1991.
13Kodaira, 1990; Akiyama and Kodaira, 1987.
14Kodaira, 1990; Lemish and Rice, 1986.

Early Childhood or Pre-school Age (children ages 3 to 5)

A great deal of the research on the effects of television violence has been directed at pre-schoolers. Relatively strong effects of televised violence for both girls and boys in this age group have been reported,(1) especially when the violence is in cartoon format. There are a number of reasons that pre-schoolers may be an especially vulnerable audience.

Approach to Processing Information and Watching Television

Pre-schoolers demonstrate a strong tendency to focus on the most physically obvious features of their environment. They are also highly centred in their attention, focusing on a single feature of their environment at a time, often not noticing other aspects of a given situation. By the beginning of pre-school age, children are able to use symbolic processes like thought and mental imagery, which allow them to begin developing organised expectations about what things are like, what features and events regularly go together and are in the same category, and what events are likely to follow each other in sequence. (These are called "schemas.") As they develop, children gradually become more capable of telling the difference between aspects of pictures, images and events that are important and those that are merely vivid. By using event schemas (sometimes also called "scripts"), pre-schoolers also become increasingly able to recognise that a series of events is all part of a single process, rather than an unconnected array of separate characters and events.(2) Since their ability to form schemas depends upon their accumulated experience, as well as on their cognitive development, pre-schoolers remain quite dependent on physically obvious features while their own personal guiding schemas are developing.

This style of processing information leads pre-schoolers to watch television with an "exploration" approach.(3) Although they actively search for meaning in the television content,(4) they are still especially attracted to vivid production features (the "formal features" of television programs), such as rapid character movement, rapid changes of scene and character, varied settings, intense or unexpected sights and sounds, loud music, and peculiar or non-human voices. These formal features of production are, in fact, an expanded list of the features that attract the attention of toddlers and even infants.

Pre-schoolers are not responding mindlessly to these physical features. Just as they are beginning to develop scripts and other schemas that help them organise and make sense of their experience with real life, it seems that pre-schoolers are also developing schemas related to the formal features of television, and can use them to explore the medium. They appear to use these features as signals that something interesting is going to happen. It has been found that they may not notice or remember important or central aspects of the television content unless these aspects are signalled by the most obvious formal features of the production.(5) This is especially true when the material presented is outside the child's experience, and the child therefore has no way to understand the portrayed events.

An example of pre-schoolers focusing on formal features in a program presenting content outside their previous experience involves an educational program about the uses and construction of canals.(6) In one visually vivid but incidental scene from this program, canal boat operators covered their heads to avoid having spiders land on them as they went through a tunnel. Pre-school viewers were most likely to describe this show as being about spiders jumping down on people as they went through tunnels. They did not mention the intended educational content of the program.

Another example involves a three-year-old watching a children's educational program about preparing to go on a dog sled race in the Arctic.(7) Having no experience against which to compare dog sledding, the child came up with a synopsis apparently based on a feature of the program with which he did have some experience: "They have sunglasses. I have sunglasses. Mommy bought me sunglasses."

Vivid production features are especially important as attention-getters for pre-schoolers, because at this age they are still watching an operating screen in the same room only about half the time the set is on.(8) During the time they are not watching, they appear to keep listening,(9) and will frequently turn their visual attention back to the screen in response to an obvious feature such as loud music or sound effects.(10) They are probably keeping an ear tuned more for signals that they should look at the screen to see what is going on, rather than as a way to keep up with plot events in the program by listening to the sound track. (Note that pre-school-age children understand visual material on television more easily than auditory material,(11) although they can learn from auditory material if it uses dialogue that matches the pre-schooler's own vocabulary.) (12)

By the time children are at the pre-school age, they have developed considerable sophistication in their understanding of formal features of programming, but they still miss the meaning of more subtle features. For example, they readily recognise the format of animation (cartoons) as a signal that the content is meant for them.(13) They expect to understand it, and they will attend to even quite difficult material if it is presented to them in this format.(14) By age four, most children also understand that camera "zooms" in and out depict approaching and moving away from an object. Some, but not all, four-year-olds understand that moving away from or toward an object can also be signalled by showing an edited sequence of camera shots taken at different angles.(15)

Pre-schoolers, even older ones, rarely understand instant replays(16) or dissolves and cuts to flashback that signal the passage of time(17) time leaps(18), or dreams.(19) They also do not understand less obvious formal features used to mark changes between parts of a program or to mark a change from program content to advertising content. They may therefore incorporate an advertisement into their recounting of program plots, or may misunderstand the plot in other ways, especially if the program is longer than eight minutes.(20) However, with experience, even quite young children can catch on to the meaning of more subtle formal features. One researcher found that children who watched a lot of television were among the first in their age group to acquire an understanding of zooms and edits.(21)

Children who regularly watch a particular program can pick up on the formal features used specifically in that show. For example, three-year-olds who were regular viewers of a magazine-style children's program called Playschool consistently returned their visual attention to the screen at the program's segment switchpoints – a very subtle formal feature, indeed.(22) Most pre-schoolers will also respond quite consistently to the subtle formal feature of a child's or woman's voice on the sound track – a feature that signals material that is likely to be interesting and comprehensible to them.(23)

The motivations of television characters or their emotional reactions to plot events are usually accompanied by quite difficult and subtle formal features.(24) This may be why pre-schoolers rarely seem to attend to or remember information about television characters' emotions, particularly if those characters are in animated or puppet form.(25) Nevertheless, they can quite readily divide characters into "good" and "bad" characters based on their appearance.(26) Children are likely to classify as "bad" and "scary" a vividly ugly character, or one who has startling physical features such as a segmented body or green skin, even if that character is portrayed as behaving kindly or as having good intentions.(27) Cartoons, in particular, may be a source of negative stereotypes about minority group members or people from outside North America,(28) since characters taking the role of the "enemy" are frequently portrayed as having foreign accents and non-Caucasian features.(29)

Attraction to Television Violence

Pre-schoolers are predisposed to seek out and pay attention to televised violence because such violence is accompanied by formal features such as loud music, rapid movement, rapid scene changes, and sound effects that attract the attention of pre-schoolers.(30) The violent content itself is conveyed visually, making it especially likely that pre-schoolers will learn it easily. Furthermore, pre-schoolers are unlikely to pick up on more subtly conveyed mitigating information such as negative motivations, punishing consequences that occur at another point in time, or the suffering of victims, making it unlikely that they will be able to put the violence in context.(31)

The Committee on Social Issues Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry has described a case example of a pre-schooler who surprised her family by suddenly expressing fear and hostility toward "black people" after seeing Roots on television with her family.(32) She described the scene that had frightened her as one in which a black slave is repeatedly whipped. She concluded from this scene that the character being whipped must be a very bad person, to be so severely punished, and therefore must be very scary.

It is not the violence itself that makes cartoons attractive to pre-schoolers, but the vivid production features of cartoons, such as rapid character movements, sound effects and loud music.

Although there is no reason to believe that this particular reaction was typical of pre-schoolers who viewed Roots, it is certainly consistent with the way pre-schoolers watch television. This scene was highly visual, marked by the loud and repeated sounds of the lash and rapid camera cuts between the victim and the violent aggressor. The action and background were otherwise relatively simple, and the scene focused on only two characters. These features would likely attract the pre-schooler's attention and keep it. Other events in the plot, of course, revealed to adult and older child viewers that this whipping was undeserved, excessively cruel, and carried out by a character whose motivations and past behaviours were immoral, against a character whose motivations and past behaviour were admirable. The pre-schooler likely missed all of this, since the information was presented in earlier scenes that she likely did not realise were connected to the whipping scene, and since the information was largely conveyed in adult dialogue, which she wouldn't understand. She may not even have recognised that the people in those earlier scenes were the same people who were in the whipping scene, since in the earlier scenes the characters had different clothes on and different expressions on their faces, were in different settings, and behaved differently. She therefore would not have understood this scene in the same way that adults and older children would, as one eliciting great empathy for the victim of the beating. She would have judged him entirely by the immediate and most obvious physical information in that scene, making his dark skin and pain-contorted face appear both evil and scary. Her lack of recognition of and empathy with his pain are also quite consistent with a pre-schooler's lack of response to emotional reactions of television characters. This scary character would seem especially threatening to her in light of her view of television as a "window on the world" (i.e., as giving an accurate, unaltered representation of the world). The fact that the series was performed by actors, portraying events that happened in the distant past, would have no meaning for her.

Preference for Cartoons

Pre-schoolers overwhelmingly prefer and pay close attention to cartoons(33) – a format that is particularly violent. Saturday-morning cartoons, for example, have 20 to 25 violent acts per hour compared with five violent acts per hour in prime time programming.(34) With their preference for cartoons, pre-schoolers are therefore being exposed to large numbers of violent acts in their viewing day. Based on their viewing patterns, it has been estimated that, by the time they start school, children will have seen an average of 8,000 murders and 100,000 assorted other acts of violence and destruction on television.(35)

Analysis of children's viewing preferences and attention to television has revealed that it is not the violence itself that makes cartoons attractive to pre-schoolers(36) but the formal features of cartoons, such as rapid character movement, sound effects, and loud music. Children are just as attracted to non-violent cartoons(37) and to live action shows that have these formal features. (For example, this is the age group with the highest preference for children's educational television).(38)

Although it may be reassuring to know that pre-schoolers are drawn to the action of violent television rather than to the violent content itself, watching high levels of TV action may also make children more aggressive. Pre-school-age children have been found to behave more aggressively than usual in their play after watching high-action television with no violence in it at all.(39) It has been found that high excitement level alone is sufficient to increase their aggression, and that vivid formal features produce such levels of excitement. It has also been demonstrated that violent content produces substantial effects over and above those brought about by excitement alone.(40)

Extent of Ability to Distinguish Reality from Fantasy

Because the programs pre-school children watch are mostly cartoons, it might be argued that the violence they see is relatively harmless because they know it is just fantasy. Knowing that television content is fantasy does make a difference in the behaviour and emotions of older children and adults.(41) In studies that specifically compared the effects of live-action violence with those of cartoon violence, the live-action violence was found to have a substantially larger effect on aggressive behaviour than the cartoon violence.(42) These comparison studies have not been carried out with pre-school-age children. Studies that used only cartoons for measuring the effects of violent television did include pre-schoolers, and they showed increases in aggression. An Australian study found the combination of violent cartoons and toys related to the cartoon violence to be particularly potent: both boys and girls were more likely to be physically and verbally aggressive with another pre-schooler if they had just watched a violent cartoon together; this was especially true if they also had toys related to cartoons in their play area.(43)

When asked, pre-schoolers can usually identify cartoons as "not real" or as "pretend."(44) They also tend to call programs about ghosts, monsters, vampires, witches, and genies "not real."(45) However, pre-schoolers cannot usually explain what they mean by "real,"(46) and more open-ended questioning usually reveals that they treat even cartoons as part of television's "magic window," which reveals an accurate, unaltered representation of the world.(47)

Pre-schoolers probably do not mean the same thing as adults do when they call things "real" or "pretend." Kindergarten boys who were asked to describe what happens after the Superman program is over responded that in his "real" life, the character goes home and takes off his cape, or turns into "Dick Clark" (presumably "Clark Kent" was meant).(48) Another kindergarten student is quoted as saying, "I know Big Bird isn't real. That's just a costume. There's just a plain bird inside."(49) Kindergarten children also didn't understand the difference between puppet, animated, and human characters in programs they typically watched.(50) In fact, the reality versus fantasy distinction may be quite irrelevant to pre-schoolers in their judgement of television content.(51)

Nor does the fact that cartoons are a fantasy stop pre-schoolers from identifying with cartoon characters. It has been found that the more unrealistic a character is, the more pre-schoolers both want to be like that character and think they are like that character.(52) An analysis of children's heroes from 1900 to 1980 and a survey of adults who grew up before and after television(53) confirmed that pre-schoolers today (but not children in middle childhood) are more likely to choose fantasy heroes over real-life heroes in their play, more likely to engage in more heroic adventure play, and more likely to learn about heroes and play themes from television rather than from friends, siblings or parents.

Television Content that Pre-schoolers Find Scary

About 50 percent of pre-schoolers report having been scared by something on television,(54) and even highly improbable creatures or events can scare a pre-schooler.(55) Pre-schoolers may not show as much fear watching cartoons as they do watching other violent programs. A study found that pre-schoolers showed physical signs of fear from watching cartoon violence, as opposed to cartoon or realistic programs that weren't violent. However, they showed even more physical signs of fear and more often described a program as "scary" after watching realistic violence featuring human actors than after watching cartoon violence.(56)

That said, realism is certainly not a prerequisite for scaring a pre-schooler. In fact one of the most frightening television segments found for pre-schoolers is the highly fantastic transformation of David Banner into The Incredible Hulk in the children's television series of that name.(57) Pre-schoolers find the Hulk himself terrifying and think he is evil as a result of his physical appearance, because they do not understand that things can remain the same while looking different and that the Hulk is, in fact, the same benevolent character as David Banner.

The most common ways parents try to help their young children cope with fears about what they see on television are cognitive strategies such as talking to the children about the program or explaining that the scary parts are not real.(58) Although these strategies work well with older children, they do not with pre-schoolers. Pre-schoolers who were given verbal explanations in an educational program about snakes actually showed more fear when they later saw the snake-pit scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark than pre-schoolers did who were shown the education program without explanatory narration.(59) In another example, virtually all the pre-schoolers in a 1984 study were able to answer correctly that the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz was not real, if they had previously been given that information. However, these children were just as frightened as children who had not been told to remember that the witch was not real when both groups viewed the witch threatening Dorothy on the TV screen.(60) One possible explanation is that pre-schoolers distracted by fear cannot reconceptualise a frightening stimulus; another explanation is perhaps that adults misunderstand what children mean when they use the words "real" and "pretend." One child in a study of children's fears described the scary animals in her nightmares: "I told them they were a dream, but they wouldn't go away."(61)

Suggestions for Parents

Rather than trying to comfort a frightened pre-schooler with logical explanations, parents would do better to provide distraction such as a snack, or physical comfort such as letting the child sit close to them or giving the child a blanket or a toy to hold.(62) Besides providing distraction or comfort, parents of pre-schoolers may be able to prevent their children from having high levels of general fear from television by mediating their viewing in some way. Children whose parents do not use any means of mediation have been found to be likely to adopt a view of the world as "mean and scary."(63)

Children whose parents do provide mediation have been found to be not only less fearful, but also less aggressive.(64) Parental mediation to reduce a child's fears and aggression can include limiting the amount of programming the child watches (especially violent or scary content), watching with the child, encouraging or discouraging behaviour children are imitating from television, commenting on violent or scary content, and encourage the viewing of prosocial programs.(65) In addition, they can reduce the effect of television violence considerably if they refuse to provide their pre-schoolers with toys related to violent television.(66)

The extent to which parents mediate their children's television viewing varies from country to country. In Japan, mothers report frequently using television as a "babysitter" for young children.(67) By age three or four, Japanese pre-schoolers were found to spend more than half their viewing time watching alone or with other children. In sharp contrast, American pre-schoolers spend about 75 percent of their viewing time in the company of one or both parents.(68) However, the programs they are watching are most likely to be those intended for an adult audience and chosen by the adults.(69) It is therefore likely that these parents are probably increasing their children's exposure to content that is violent, frightening, or, at least, incomprehensible.

The American pattern does not appear to be duplicated in Canada. Research done by the Centre for Media and Youth Studies reveals that well over 80 percent of the programs that pre-schoolers are watching in Canadian urban areas are programs intended for children.(70) On the other hand, it is not known to what extent Canadian parents use television as a "babysitter" for their pre-schoolers. It has been suggested that parents may be more likely to let young children view alone if they are watching children's educational programs.(71) Such a tendency is understandable, since children are most likely to need information and reassurance from their parents when they are watching adult programming.(72) Recent evidence suggests that even if children are watching alone, they are still learning new vocabulary – from Sesame Street at least.(73) But parents who do not watch children's shows with their pre-schoolers are losing out on an opportunity to maximise the child's learning by discussing the material and doing follow-up activities that elaborate on what has been learned from the programs.(74)

Canadian children watch programs that are especially intended for children if such programs are available, but unfortunately they are frequently not available.

Suggestions for the Television Industry

It would be a good idea for the television industry to avoid the use of violence in programming for pre-school-age children, since violence is not necessary to attract their attention and has been shown to increase their level of aggression. There is not much point in using television violence to teach pre-schoolers lessons about the negative aspects or consequences of violence, since their ability to comprehend these concepts from television portrayals is extremely limited.

Canadian children watch programs that are especially intended for children if such programs are available, but unfortunately they are frequently not available.(75) Children therefore end up watching a great deal of television that is intended for an older audience. Canadian television stations could improve the situation by offering a wider variety of children's programming (rather than the cartoon fare that currently makes up the majority of children's programs) and scheduling it at the times pre-schoolers are likely to be viewing: in the morning, after three o'clock in the afternoon, and in the early evening.(76)

The research into how pre-schoolers watch and understand television points to ways of providing more appropriate programs for them.(77) For example, obvious formal features can be used to direct pre-schoolers' attention to the most important features of the program's content, such as critical plot events. Sound effects may be more effective than visual inserts.(78) Inserting random bursts of vivid formal features or humour can increase children's general attention to television material. Such insertions will not interfere with the child's understanding of the material, as long as the form of humour used does not appear to convey things that are not true (for example, irony, which might be taken as meaning the opposite of what is intended).(79)

Fast pacing is another formal feature that seems to improve children's attention and comprehension,(80) although fast pacing may also make the child more aggressive. Rather than hectic pacing, programs can use narration and dialogue in women's and children's voices and "child-directed speech." ("Child-directed speech" involves using a slow rate of speech, simple sentences, repetition, and references to events and objects that are actually being shown on the screen.(81)) These methods have also been found to improve children's attention and comprehension.(82)

Emotion is a difficult concept for pre-schoolers to understand from television. To teach about emotions on television, it might be more effective to use human, rather than animated or puppet characters.(83) Suggestions for drawing the child's attention to the emotion being presented include using attention-getting formal features; inserting pauses in the flow of events after the material is presented, to allow the child to think about the event; providing narration about the emotion; or extending the period during which the emotion is expressed. Such efforts are worth investigating, but may have limited effect. Attempts to train pre-schoolers to recognise the emotions of others have resulted in only short-term success.(84)

Endnotes

1Hearold, 1986.
2Keating, 1984; Schank and Abelson, 1977; Hawkins and Pingree, 1986.
3Wright and Huston, 1983.
4See, for example, Takahashi, 1991; Lorch et al., 1987.
5Calvert and Gersh, 1987.
6Choat, 1988.
7Winick and Winick, 1979, p. 40.
8Anderson and Lorch, 1983.
9Hawkins, Kim and Pingree, 1991; Rolandelli et al., 1991.
10Anderson and Lorch, 1983.
11See, for example, Choat, 1988; Hayes and Birnbaum, 1980; Hayes et al., 1981.
12Jacobvitz et al., 1991; Peracchio, 1993; Rolandelli, 1989.
13Huston and Wright, 1983.
14Campbell et al., 1987.
15Abelman, 1989.
16Huston and Wright, 1989.
17Calvert, 1988.
18Abelman, 1990.
19Wilson and Weiss, 1993.
20Huston and Wright, 1989; Kunkel, 1988; Stutts and Hunnicutt, 1987; Van Evra, 1990; Wilson and Weiss, 1992.
21Abelman 1989; 1990.
22Duck et al., 1988.
23Huston and Wright, 1983.
24Collins, 1982.
25Hayes and Casey, 1992.
26Liss, Reinhardt and Fredriksen, 1983.
27Hoffner and Cantor, 1985; Liss et al., 1983.
28Dietz and Strasburger, 1991.
29Hesse and Mack, 1991.
30Rice, Huston and Wright, 1982.
31Collins, 1982, 1983.
32Committee on Social Issues Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, 1982.
33See, for example, Argenta, Stoneman and Brody, 1986; Caron and Croteau, 1991; Caron, Nardella, et al., 1993; Huston, Wright et al., 1990; Jaglom and Gardner, 1981; Kodaira, 1992.
34Huston, Donnerstein et al., 1992.
35Huston, Donnerstein et al., 1992.
36See, for example, Potts, Huston and Wright, 1986.
37See, for example, the "mesmerised" pre-schoolers in Argenta, Stoneman and Brody's 1986 study. The discovery that cartoons' formal features may "mesmerise" pre-schoolers may in itself be a cause for concern. Pre-schoolers have a tendency to look more at the screen the longer they have been looking – a pattern of visual attention termed "attentional inertia" (Anderson and Lorch, 1983; Krull, 1983). Pre-schoolers tend to stop watching television when the content becomes incomprehensible to them, but their "attentional inertia" keeps their attention beyond the first indication of incomprehensibility, allowing them to "venture into unknown cognitive territory" (Anderson and Lorch, 1983; p. 25). Cartoons probably do not have too much "unknown cognitive territory," but attentional inertia may be sufficient to keep the child's attention on the screen in the relatively short portions of cartoon programs in which there are not vivid formal features that would otherwise draw the child's attention back to the screen – hence the apparent state of being "mesmerised." This may be a phenomenon unique to pre-schoolers. Although Anderson and Lorch (1983) have reported attentional inertia in older children and adults, as well, Krull (1983) notes that it accounts for little of the variance in television viewing after the pre-school age. He estimates that up to 50 percent of pre-schoolers' attention to television is the result of "attentional inertia," but that this inertia accounts for only about 10 percent of the attention of seven and eight-year olds.
38Jaglom and Gardner, 1981; Lemish, 1984; Winick and Winick, 1979; Huston, Wright et al., 1990.
39Huston-Stein et al., 1981; Greer et al., 1982.
40Potts, Huston and Wright, 1986; Josephson, 1987.
41See, for example, Feshbach, 1976; Hapkiewicz and Stone, 1974; Huesmann, Eron et al., 1983.
42Hearold, 1986.
43Sanson and DiMuccio, 1993.
44Dorr, 1983; Downs, 1990; Jaglom and Gardner, 1981.
45Dorr, 1983.
46Dorr, 1983.
47Flavell et al., 1990; Lurcat, 1991; Nikken and Peeters, 1988; Potter, 1988; Watkins, Sprafkin, et al., 1988.
48Fernie, 1981.
49Morison and Gardner, 1978.
50Quarforth, 1979.
51Flavell et al., 1990; Morison and Gardner, 1978.
52Fernie, 1981.
53French and Pena, 1991.
54Wilson, Hoffner and Cantor, 1987.
55Huston, Donnerstein et al., 1992.
56Osborn and Endsley, 1971.
57See, for example, Sparks and Cantor, 1986.
58Wilson and Cantor, 1987.
59Wilson and Cantor, 1987.
60Cantor and Wilson, 1984.
61Jersild and Homes, 1935, cited in Cantor and Wilson, 1984, p. 443.
62Wilson and Cantor, 1987; Wilson, Hoffner and Cantor, 1987; Wilson and Weiss, 1993.
63Singer et al., 1988.
64Singer and Singer, 1981; Singer et al., 1988.
65Huston, Wright, et al., 1990.
66Dorr, 1986; Huston and Wright, 1989; Sanson and DiMuccio, 1993.
67Kodaira, 1990, 1992.
68Huston, Wright et al., 1990.
69St. Peters et al., 1991; Singer and Singer, 1981.
70Caron, Frenette et al., 1992; Caron, Nardella et al., 1993.
71Singer and Singer, 1981.
72Singer and Singer, 1981.
73Rice, Huston, Truglio and Wright, 1990.
74See, for example, Choat, 1988; Cook et al., 1975; Salomon, 1977.
75Caron, Nardella et al., 1993.
76Caron, Nardella et al., 1993; Luke, 1988; Kodaira, 1992.
77See, for example, Keating, 1984.
78Calvert and Gersh, 1987.
79Zillmann and Bryant, 1988.
80Calvert and Scott, 1989.
81Rollandelli, Wright et al., 1991.
82Rollandelli, 1989; Rolandelli, Wright et al., 1991.
83Hayes and Casey, 1992.
84Feshbach and Cohen, 1988.

Middle Childhood or Elementary School Age (children ages 6 to 11)

The age of eight is critical in the relationship between television violence and the development of aggression, because of the cognitive and emotional developments that occur at this age.

Television-viewing Habits

When children start school, they watch less television, since they have less time available for day-time viewing. By grade two or three, they start watching more TV again, since they are able to stay up later in the evening. From this time, the amount of television that children watch increases gradually until adolescence.(1) At elementary school age, North American and Japanese children watch more often without their parents than they did when they were pre-schoolers;(2) Swedish children, however, are much more likely to watch with their parents than without them.(3) At this age, children begin to watch less educational television and more cartoons, situation comedies, and action- adventure programs.(4)

Middle childhood is considered to be an especially important period for understanding the effects of television on aggression. Some researchers focus on children between the ages of nine and twelve because of the large amount of television they watch (and hence their potential to be immersed in violent content).(5) Other researchers believe that the age of ten to twelve is most important because it is at this age that children's long-term interests and behaviour patterns emerge.(6) Most researchers, however, agree that the age of eight is critical in the relationship between television violence and the development of aggression. This is because of the cognitive and emotional developments that occur at this age. Perhaps the most important of these is the shift from relying primarily on perceptual information to relying on conceptual information to understand the world.(7)

Approach to Processing Information and Watching Television

Between the ages of six and seven, children develop a memory or expectation for how stories (conveyed through any medium) are structured.(8) They become more efficient at processing information about a story (including the plots of television programs) because they are now able to anticipate and direct their attention to important story content, store information in their memories according to its importance, and match the information presented with their expectations of what will happen. By about age seven, children's visual attention to television increases to about 70 percent of their viewing time and then levels off.(9) Although children of this age are still attentive to vivid formal features, they can more readily ignore them in favour of content features that are important to the plot or to the child's own personal reasons for viewing. By age eight, children can interpret most complex formal feature codes of television, such as dissolves and cuts to denote time leaps, flashbacks and dreams, and the perspective information conveyed by edited compilations of multiple camera angles.(10) Elementary school-aged children can identify formal features that distinguish real from fantasy television content. For example, children in one study said they knew the televised event of the Challenger space shuttle explosion was real because of the poor-quality video, disjointed speech by the announcers, printed words on the screen, and absence of close-ups.(11)

At this age, children develop the ability to recognise unchanging properties of apparently changing objects and become capable of using more complex systems of classifying objects and events. This allows them to understand more subtle formal features and content and to make reliable inferences in the absence of concrete events. They can therefore understand story plots more fully and interpret them in light of the emotions and motivations of TV characters.(12) Children will use stereotypes to classify characters as good or bad if no information about a character's past behaviour or motivation is given, but when such information is provided, they will attend to it and incorporate it in their assessment of the character.(13) By age eight, children are more likely to be sensitive to important moderating influences of television content, and they will not become more aggressive themselves if the violence they see is portrayed as evil, as causing human suffering, or as resulting in punishment or disapproval.(14)

Although children at this age have a truly impressive ability to make sense of the television world, they do not always use it. It is the amount of mental effort children invest that determines whether they will use their cognitive abilities and critical skills to process television information deeply, or merely react to it in an unfocused, superficial way.(15) While pre-school-age children invest a great amount of mental effort if they think they will be able to understand the material,(16) children of elementary school age invest increasingly less mental effort overall in watching television.(17) Those children who watch television for information do invest more mental effort and learn more, but it is more common for children to watch for relaxation, amusement or just to pass the time(18) and hence process the information superficially and uncritically.

The amount of mental effort children invest when watching television varies from culture to culture. For example, compared with American children their age, Israeli children consider television a less "easy" medium to understand, so they invest more mental effort and learn more from it when they watch.(19) In cultures where children do consider television to be an "easy" medium, it may be necessary to provide reminder cues(20) or for adults to initiate discussion(21) that will remind children to use the perceptual and critical skills they have developed.

Particular Susceptibility to the Effects of Television Violence

The age of eight has been identified as a watershed period for the effects of television violence on children.(22) There are a number of reasons for this.

Ability to distinguish reality from fantasy. By age eight, children are more likely to become aggressive after watching violent television if they believe the violence they have seen reflects real life.(23) "Real" to an eight-year-old appears to mean physically existing in the world.(24) They see characters with superhuman powers as not real, because they recognise that their activities are physically impossible in the real world. However, they may regard police drama as real because police officers do exist. One grade two student in a study explained that The Brady Bunch were real because "they have a refrigerator, and there are such things as refrigerators."(25)

By age ten, "real" is more likely to mean "possible in real life."(26) Children at this age in one study tended to consider the British police drama The Bill "real" because they thought that it portrayed events that could happen, even though they knew its gory injury scenes were produced with make-up or paint. One twelve-year-old even went so far as to say that actors in The Bill "have to be policemen for about a month or something – they have to join it and see what happens."(27) Some eight-year-old children in this study used the dimension of violence itself as a criterion for the reality of a show. They described The Bill as real "because it's about robbers," or "because it's all about handcuffing and police and blood."(28) For children who equate violence with reality, all violent content is considered real and therefore a potentially useful guide for how to behave in real life. The belief that violence is inherently realistic is not common, even among eight-year-olds, but there is some evidence that it may persist beyond middle childhood for those who do subscribe to it. In other studies, some twelve-year-old boys (but only those who were delinquents with lower IQs) also shared this belief,(29) as did some adults interviewed in both the United States and Britain,(30) in spite of the fact that violence is vastly more prevalent on prime time television than it is in even the most violent North American cities.(31)

Tendency to identify with aggressive heroes and engage in aggressive fantasies. When asked who they wanted to be like, eight- to ten-year-olds in one study named unrealistic characters from television much more often than characters whom they knew to be more like real people.(32) The common theme in the reasons for their choice was that the unrealistic characters were powerful, brave, and strong. Unfortunately, the characters tended to express these qualities primarily through violent action.

Bravery, strength, and power are themes that have run strongly through the fantasy play of six-to eleven-year-olds, even long before television entered children's lives in the 1950s. When children in one study chose to emulate and dramatise fantasy heroes (as opposed to heroes from real life), they almost always described those heroes as brave or courageous.(33) The theme of "power" has been found to be one the most frequently expressed themes by children of this age group while watching or discussing television.(34)

This theme no doubt arises because children of this age are struggling to achieve competence and independence in their own personal and social development.(35) Nevertheless, it is surprising to find children adopting such one-dimensional heroes, given how much more complex and sophisticated their perceptions and mental processes are supposed to have become by this age. One explanation may be that television provides children with rather narrow and stereotypical characters, so that they have relatively little opportunity to express their increased sophistication if they choose television characters as heroes.(36) In one study, children who chose family members or other real people as their heroes did show a more sophisticated understanding. The children described real-life heroes as having a much wider range of human qualities,(37) such as "helpful," "kind," and "gentle," in addition to "strong."

Although they may be rather one-dimensional, television heroes of action drama and violent cartoons embody the dimensions that may be the most important to children at this age, especially boys. These heroes are unusually admirable, powerful, and successful in their aggression.(38) No wonder children identify with them! The heroes' victims are portrayed as dangerous, vicious, deserving of their fate, and as not suffering any pain with which the viewer might empathise.(39) In fact, the concept of justification is one area in which children of this age have shown they do make relatively complex judgements about television characters. Children in grades five and six have drawn distinctions between justified and unjustified violence in cartoons, and have consequently found the comic violence of The Pink Panther more violent and less acceptable than the action adventure violence of Dick Tracy.(40)

It appears that watching violence on television makes it more likely that children will later create violent fantasies. Children in grades one and two have a strong tendency to re-enact the content of televised cartoons in their play immediately after they see it, especially if program-related toys are available.(41) Eight-year olds who watch a great deal of violent programming have been found to create more aggressive-heroic fantasies when they are ten.(42) Children who do create violent or heroically aggressive fantasies43 and who identify with aggressive heroes(44) are the ones most likely to be affected by violent television.(45) The reasoning is that fantasies serve as rehearsals for violent responses to real-life events. Children who do not dwell on the televised violence in their personal fantasies and play are less likely to have their behaviour affected by these violent images, perhaps because they see it as irrelevant to their real lives or self-image.

Expectations about gender-related reactions to violence. At elementary school age, there appears to be a growing recognition by girls that aggression is not appropriate for them, which may account for both lesser interest in viewing violence on television and less likelihood of using aggression in real-life situations.(46) At this age, girls seem increasingly to recognise that violent content and the cartoon format is "for boys."(47) Some researchers have noted that children entering middle childhood recognise the formal features (such as more obvious features, male narrators, and noise) that signal content for boys and those (such as fades, dissolves, background music, female dialogue, and female narrators) that signal content for girls.(48) Elementary school-age boys continue to report enjoying vivid formal features and continue to watch lots of cartoons and action adventure programming (which are both violent and full of "boy typed" formal features). Girls this age do not report watching a lot of cartoons, and thus their favourite programs – mostly comedies – contain less violence.(49) Girls are less likely to identify with the violent heroes that most attract boys, and they seem less interested in the power or strength of their chosen heroes.(50) While girls are just as confident as boys are that they could effectively carry out aggressive activities, they are significantly more likely than boys are to believe that such behaviour would meet with social disapproval.(51) Girls also expect to feel more guilty if they are aggressive, and they have a stronger expectation that they will cause suffering to victims. Boys of this age who are not very aggressive also feel guilt about aggression and empathy for the suffering of others.(52)

For these reasons some researchers have concluded that television violence has a greater effect on boys than on girls, from about age eight to ten onwards. Nevertheless, girls who do watch violent television are likely to become more aggressive than girls who do not, and girls who prefer masculine activities during their elementary school years are especially affected by watching violent television.(53)

Perception of the World from Watching Television

Since the 1970s, researchers have known that children who watch a great deal of television see the world as a meaner, scarier, and more dangerous place than children who do not watch a lot of television.(54) Similar patterns have been found with adults.(55)

Do children come to believe the world is a violent, dangerous place because television portrays it that way, or do we just find a relationship between heavy viewing and a perception that the world is mean because fearful children take refuge in television rather than going out to face the world they fear? Evidence has been found that adults who live in dangerous neighbourhoods are especially likely to watch a lot of television, and if children follow the same pattern, this might account for the finding that children who watch a lot of television see the world as a mean place.(56)

On the other hand, experimental evidence(57) shows that heavy exposure to "slasher" movies like Friday the 13th series actually does increase young adults' fears and their tendency to see the world as a meaner, scarier place, so this might be the case with violent television and younger children, too. It is quite conceivable that both of these things are happening.

Unfortunately, if fearful children are seeking out television as a refuge, they are unlikely to find much there to reassure them. The message children are likely to receive about themselves from television is one of devaluation and danger, especially if they are girls.(58) When children are featured as characters in North American prime-time and weekend day-time television, they are even more likely than adults are to be depicted as victims of violence and ill-health.(59) Adolescents are portrayed as being not only frequently victimised by others, but also as engaging in self-destructive behaviours such as smoking and drinking.(60)

Elementary school-age children in one study were even more likely than were pre-school children to say that they had been scared by something on television.61 This pattern may be more than sheer accumulation of scary experiences over time. Another study found that children in grade six reported feeling deeper, more emotional fears than did children in grade two after having seen The Day After, a dramatisation of what would happen after a nuclear explosion.(62) It is also possible that girls may feel this deeper fear sooner than boys. Following the televised coverage of the Challenger explosion, girls in grades four to six showed a more intense and emotional reaction than boys, who reported a more impersonal regret.(63)

Television Content that Children Find Scary

Elementary school-aged children do not necessarily find televised violence frightening.(64) At this age, children are more likely to be afraid of television portrayals if the depicted scary events seem possible(65) and especially if they are shown in circumstances that resemble the child's own.(66) The Day After was particularly frightening to the sixth graders not only because it was portrayed so realistically, but also because its heroes and heroines were children like themselves, who suffered and died in a context that was otherwise very much like the viewers' own.(67) With their capacity to identify with others, to empathise, and to imagine transformations that maintain their essential identity in different circumstances, elementary school children are apparently highly vulnerable to such presentations.(68) Children may enjoy rather than fear violence at a distance – violence that happens to people unlike themselves and in circumstances different from their own. After in-depth interviews with Toronto children in grades four and five, one researcher elaborated:
What the children describe as scary are those incidents when the familiar and safe, like the home and parents and loved one, are negatively transformed. Home becomes a killing ground, parents are powerless to protect, dolls become killers.(69)

It is when children identify with the victim of television violence that they become frightened.(70) But, as previously noted, most boys, at least, identify with the strong, powerful heroes of television programs, not with the victims.(71) By doing so, they may avoid the fear and worry that have been found, in one study at least, among children who watch a lot of television.(72) For example, one boy has described a deliberate attempt to reduce his own fear by using identification, the first time he saw Nightmare on Elm Street: "It was easy. I pretended I was Freddy Kruger. Then I wasn't scared. Now, that's what I always do and I am never scared."(73) Since identifying with an aggressive hero has a strong influence on increasing aggression, this tactic for reducing fear is chilling, indeed.(74)

Attraction to Horror Movies

A taste for horror movies is one of the more surprising developments in elementary school-aged children.(75) This is the genre that is probably the most likely to frighten children.(76) Besides a great deal of graphic and gory violence, horror movies have formal features that make them especially scary. Close-up shots, for example, elicit a more intense response to startling or gory events. Sudden cuts into scenes and abrupt reorientation of the camera angle are used to startle and disorient the viewer. Close-ups and camera shots from the perspective of the victim increase the likelihood that the viewer will identify with the victim. Cuts to black are used to heighten suspense.(77)

Why do children deliberately scare themselves with horror movies? (Or, as one research team has put it, "How can this formula work for non-masochistic audiences?"78). We do not know for sure, but a number of explanations have been offered. One is that suffering so intensely with the victimised protagonist makes the relief of the happy ending more enjoyable.(79) The reasoning is that the viewer is likely to experience a leftover physiological arousal from all the uncertainty and distress that precedes the final resolution of the plot. This leftover arousal adds to the power of the positive emotions experienced at the happy ending, creating a feeling of greater headiness and euphoria. This effect can be compared with the greater joy experienced by fans after their home team wins a tense and difficult game than after an easily won game.(80)

A second explanation is that children at this age are so preoccupied with overcoming their state of vulnerability and dependence that they actively seek out opportunities that might provide them with more information about fearfulness and the things they fear.(81) A somewhat related explanation is that children may be deliberately trying to conquer their fears of vulnerability and victimisation by desensitising themselves through repeated exposure to horror movies.(82) Desensitisation has been found to be quite effective in reducing the fears of children at this age.(83) In contrast to pre-schoolers, children of elementary school age experienced less fear during the snake pit scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when they were previously shown an educational program about snakes, even if there was no accompanying narration.(84)

When people see the same television program repeated, they experience the same pattern of physical response that they did when they saw it the first time but at a reduced level.(85) Perhaps, the popularity of horror movie sequels (for example, the apparently endless series of Freddy videos(86)) stems from this effect. Each time they are exposed to a familiar horrifying character or predictable event, children may feel they are coming closer to conquering their fear of what used to terrify them. It may be particularly gratifying to children of this age to successfully overcome their fears, in light of their overall concern with developing personal competency and independence. Mastering frightening situations may be especially important for boys, who see it as an expectation for their gender.(87) For example, one of the sixth graders who saw The Day After had this reaction to the prospect of a nuclear attack: "....If it's going to happen, I should get ready for it ... like think of some way not to be scared when it does happen."(88)

It has been reported that people who are apprehensive about being victimised (and presumably this could include children) seek out action drama for its reassuring and comforting theme of the restoration of social justice.(89) While there is a great deal of violence in such programs, the benevolent authorities are better at it than the villains are, and they put an end to criminal victimisation, at least until the next episode. Young adults who have been made to feel apprehensive seek out such dramas more often than usual, and the theme of social justice is a more important determinant of their choice than is the level of violence in the program (especially for women).(90)

It is possible that children seek out horror movies for the same reasons, but it is unlikely that horror movies are going to reassure them that the world is just.(91) For one thing, there are so many scenes of victimisation, and the victims are usually so innocent and suffer so much, that most of the scenes actually depict unjust victimisation, not the restoration of justice. At best, the message of horror movies might be that justice is eventually restored, but often too little and too late. Moreover, the need to keep the horrifying villain around for sequels means that evil cannot usually be resoundingly and permanently defeated. Children, then, are not likely to find watching horror movies a very successful strategy in assuring themselves that the world is just. To the extent that they desensitise themselves to violence and fear, they are also very likely becoming more tolerant of violence in the real world.(92)

Suggestions for Parents

Parents can influence their child's viewing by modifying their own viewing, since parental habits continue to be an important determinant of the amount and types of programs children are watching at this age.(93) Fathers become more important influences than mothers, perhaps because at this age children watch more often during the times when men watch most, in prime time.(94)

One recommendation, especially for younger school-aged children, is that parents restrict the amount and types of programs children watch, in order to reduce their children's fears and aggressiveness. This restriction is like an announcement that the parents – "and not the TV – will raise their children."(95) One hour a day for pre-schoolers and two hours a day for early school-aged children is one recommendation for the amount to let children watch.(96) Of course, if parents limit television time, it means they should provide alternative activities for their children.(97) Constructive learning and play will not necessarily just happen because the television is turned off.(98) In one study, first graders who had their television viewing time decreased and replaced by more time with their parents showed improvements in their reading and cognitive skills.(99)

Parents are much less likely to restrict their older school-aged children's television watching,(100) and restriction may be relatively ineffective for these older children anyway.(101) What is more likely to help is for parents to help children to understand and evaluate the content that they are watching. This is because at this age the meaning (both factual and emotional) of the violence is an important mediator of the effect such violence will have. At the beginning of this stage, parents can also help children to decode some of television's more difficult formal features, since children at this age are still just learning how to interpret these more sophisticated aspects of the medium.(102)

Discussing, explaining, and challenging television communication have been found effective in helping children to understand and interpret television material(103) and in overcoming the effect televised violence has on their attitudes and behaviour.(104) It has been found that when parents do watch violent programs with their children but do not discuss the content with them, their children may actually become more aggressive.(105) It may be that children are exposed to more televised violence if they are watching television with the parents, or it may be that their parents appear to be endorsing violent activities if they watch such actions on the screen and do not comment on their inappropriateness.

It is advisable for parents to discuss and explain even the reasons for restricting their elementary school children's watching, in order to help the children learn the intellectual and moral concerns that guide their parents' decisions.(106) It is also recommended that parents discuss the meaning of televised (and of course real-life) events with their child before the child is actually faced with them, and then again after the event has happened. In this way parents are helping their child to develop a framework for understanding and evaluating those events.

Another positive effect of these strategies is that children invest more mental effort in their watching, becoming more critical and analytical watchers of television.(107) For parents, watching television with their children, answering their questions and providing commentary can become another way of furthering their child-rearing goals, even if they are only watching together because they like the same programs and not because the parents are deliberately using the occasion for teaching.(108) Parents are more likely to discuss television content with their children if the children are intellectually gifted, probably because they recognise their children's relatively high ability to understand parental commentary. However, even children who are not unusually advanced appear to benefit from this approach.(109)

In helping children overcome their fears, parents might be tempted to tell their elementary school-aged children to cover their eyes or just to turn off the television if they are scared, but this strategy will not help much. In fact, turning off the television has not been found to be an effective strategy even for pre-schoolers.(110) Elementary school-age children can effectively reduce their fear by using a cognitive strategy, such as emphasising the unrealistic nature of a scary television event or talking to their parents about it.(111) Non-cognitive strategies do not work as well for them, except for "sitting close to Mom or Dad," a strategy that works well for both pre-school and elementary school children.

As for horror movies, parents are right to be concerned about their potential negative effects. Fortunately, horror movies are not widely accessible to children of this age, except on a few cable channels and through video rentals.(112) But children need an opportunity to discuss and deal with the fears they face at this age,(113) and parents can provide this opportunity in ways that are more helpful and direct than through horror movies. Parents can, for example, discuss their own experiences and set an example of successful coping, help children to reinterpret and challenge fears that are not based in reality, and help them develop the confidence and skills that they need to deal with the real-life challenges that cause realistic fears.

Suggestions for the Television Industry

Probably the greatest challenge for the industry is to provide entertainment programming in which life's problems are not simply and quickly solved with either violent action or hostile humour.(114) Elementary school-aged children (especially boys) watch a great number of cartoons and action-adventure dramas, and in their preoccupation with power, competence, and independence, they may be especially affected by television's simplistic and often violent portrayal of problem solving and conflict resolution.

Creating programs that have no violence or violent heroes but are still popular with children (and with the likely intended adult audience) is not the impossible challenge it might seem to be. Children at this age are more attracted to variability and tempo than to violence,(115) and adult ratings are affected very little by the amount of violence in a program.(116) While it is true that boys seek male heroes(117) and sometimes reject counterstereotypical male characters on television,(118) there are strong and positive male models (such as Bill Cosby in The Cosby Show) who are popular and who have influenced boys to adopt a variety of less sex-stereotyped behaviours.(119) Girls benefit even more from televised portrayals of less sex-stereotyped behaviours. It is important to remember that it is power, not violence or conformity with sex stereotypes, per se, that boys identify with. Boys have been found to accept highly counterstereotypical behaviour from male television characters who were powerful and had high status.(120)

The elementary school-aged audience has been called the "almost forgotten group" when it comes to targeted programming, even in American public television, which does emphasise programming for children.(121) A recent Canadian report has suggested that Canadian children of this age group may have adopted a preference for cartoons and programs intended for adults because there is little specifically for them in Canada either.(122) Given the important cognitive and social developments children experience at this age, the need to create programming that meets the needs and interests of this audience segment seems well justified.(123)

The types of programs that would be valuable include programs that demonstrate the way in which television's special effects (especially those intended to provoke fear) are made, since children at this age are developing a more sophisticated understanding of how the medium works. Children at this age appear very interested in such matters,(124) and this kind of programming has been found effective in helping them to overcome their fears of scary television content.(125)

A number of techniques have been identified to help younger elementary school children (ages six and seven) make the transition from perceptually based to conceptually based understanding. These include using previews of the main plot features, to help children to attend to and recall important features of a story;(126) inserting synopses of program events after advertisements, to improve their later comprehension of the program;(127) and narration, to improve their understanding of off-screen plot events and other implicit content.(128) Obvious and stylised formal features such as dreamy visual dissolves are more effective than camera cuts to help young viewers understand such concepts as flashbacks.(129) Humour can be used to improve both children's attention and their comprehension of television material, as long as irony and misinformation are avoided.(130) It is best to avoid fast, melodic background music; while it attracts the attention and interest of first and second graders, it actually interferes with their comprehension of the content it is accompanying.(131)

Endnotes

1Luke, 1988, in Canada; Rosengren and Windahl, 1989, in Sweden; Kodaira, 1992, in Japan; Utamachant and Kodaira, 1991, in Thailand; St. Peters et al., 1991, in the United States.
2Dorr, Kovaric and Doubleday, 1989; Kodaira, 1992; Lawrence and Wozniak, 1989; St. Peters et al., 1991.
3Schyller et al., 1986.
4Caron, Frenette et al., 1992; Caron, Nardella et al., 1993; St. Peters et al., 1991; Winick and Winick, 1979.
5van der Voort, 1986; Eron et al., 1983.
6Winick and Winick, 1979.
7For example, Cantor, Wilson and Hoffner, 1986.
8Meadowcroft and Reeves, 1989.
9Huston, Donnerstein et al., 1992.
10Abelman, 1989; 1990; Calvert, 1988; Wilson and Weiss, 1993.
11Wright, Kunkel et al., 1989.
12Collins, 1983; Huston and Wright, 1983; Knowles and Nixon, 1989, 1990.
13Hoffner, 1985.
14Collins, 1982, 1983; Comstock, 1980; Hearold, 1986.
15Salomon, 1981, 1983.
16See, for example, Hawkins, Kim and Pingree, 1991; Pingree, 1986.
17Bordeaux and Lange, 1991; Fowles, 1992.
18See, for example, Rubin, 1977; Atkin, 1985.
19Salomon, 1983.
20Brucks et al., 1988.
21Watkins, Calvert, et al.,1980.
22See, for example, Eron et al., 1983; Huesmann and Eron, 1984; Huesmann, Lagerspetz and Eron, 1984.
23Eron et al., 1983.
24Kelly, 1981.
25Kelly, 1981; Buckingham, 1993.
26Kelly, 1981; Dorr, 1983.
27Buckingham, 1993, p. 224. 28Buckingham, 1993.
29Chaney, 1970.
30Messaris, 1986, in the United States and Docherty, 1990, in Britain. 31Gerbner, Gross, Morgan and Signorielli, 1986.
32Fernie, 1981.
33French and Pena, 1991.
34Winick and Winick, 1979.
35For example, Owens, 1993.
36French and Pena, 1991. See also Babrow et al., 1988.
37French and Pena, 1991.
38See, for example, Luke, 1988; Selnow, 1986; Gerbner, Gross, Morgan and Signorielli, 1986.
39See, for example, Meyrowitz, 1986.
40Haynes, 1978.
41Greenfield, Yut et al., 1990.
42Valkenburg et al., 1992-93.
43Huesmann and Eron, 1984.
44Huesmann et al., 1983.
45A similar pattern has been found among Finnish children, especially among boys (Viemero and Paajanen, 1992).
46Eron et al., 1983.
47Buckingham, 1993.
48Huston and Wright, 1983.
49Kent, Nixon and Rendell, 1986; Huston, Wright et al., 1990.
50Reeves and Miller, 1978.
51Perry, Perry and Rasmussen, 1986.
52Perry and Bussey, 1977.
53Eron et al., 1983.
54See, for example, Gerbner, Gross, Eleey et al., 1977, and Singer, Singer and Rapaczynski, 1984, in the United States; McIlwraith and Schallow, 1982, in Canada.
55Gerbner, Gross, Eleey et al., 1977; McIlwraith and Josephson, 1985.
56Doob and Macdonald, 1979.
57See, for example, Ogles and Hoffner, 1987.
58Signorielli, 1987.
59Signorielli, 1987.
60Signorielli, 1987.
61Wilson et al., 1987.
62Palmer, 1986.
63Wright, Kunkel et al., 1989.
64Campbell, 1992; Cullingford, 1984.
65Wilson et al., 1987.
66Campbell, 1992, in Canada; Cullingford, 1984, in Britain; Cantor and Hoffner, 1990, and Palmer, 1986, in the United States.
67Palmer, 1986.
68See, for example, Cantor, Wilson and Hoffner, 1986.
69Campbell, 1992, p. 24.
70Cantor and Wilson, 1984.
71See, for example, Fernie, 1981; DeAngelis, 1993.
72McIlwraith and Schallow, 1982.
73Campbell, 1992.
74Campbell, 1992.
75Campbell, 1992.
76See, for example, Cantor, Wilson and Hoffner, 1986.
77Meyrowitz, 1986.
78Zillmann and Bryant, 1986, p. 315.
79Zillmann and Bryant, 1986.
80Zillmann and Bryant, 1986.
81cf. the "perceptual readiness explanation" in Fenigstein and Heyduk, 1985.
82cf. Zillmann and Bryant, 1985.
83Wilson and Cantor, 1987.
84Wilson and Cantor, 1987.
85Tannenbaum, 1985.
86Caron, Meunier et al., 1990, have documented the popularity of these videos.
87Zillmann and Bryant, 1986.
88Palmer, 1986.
89Zillmann and Wakshlag, 1985.
90Zillmann and Wakshlag, 1985.
91Zillmann and Bryant, 1986.
92Drabman and Thomas, 1974, 1976.
93St. Peters et al., 1991.
94Webster et al., 1986.
95Desmond et al., 1990.
96Desmond et al., 1990; Fosarelli, 1986.
97See, for example, Jason, 1987.
98Mutz et al., 1993.
99Gadberry, 1980.
100Austin, 1992; van der Voort, Nikken and van Lil, 1992; Weaver and Barbour, 1992.
101Sarlo et al., 1988.
102Collins et al., 1981; Desmond et al., 1990.
103Austin et al., 1990; Collins et al., 1981; Corder-Bolz, 1980; Desmond et al., 1990; Watkins, Calvert et al., 1980.
104Abelman, 1990; Desmond et al., 1990; Grusec, 1973; Vooijs and van der Voort, 1993a, 1993b.
105Wright, St. Peters and Huston, 1990.
106Desmond et al., 1990.
107Singer et al., 1988.
108Dorr et al., 1989.
109See, for example, Abelman, 1987.
110Cantor and Wilson, 1988; Wilson, 1989.
111Cantor and Wilson, 1988.
112Campbell, 1992; Caron, Nardella et al., 1993; Caron, Meunier et al., 1990.
113Campbell, 1992.
114See, for example, DeAngelis, 1993; Luke, 1988; Selnow, 1986.
115Huston and Wright, 1989.
116Diener and DeFour, 1978.
117Reeves and Miller, 1978.
118See, for example, Calvert and Huston, 1987; Wroblewski and Huston, 1987.
119Rosenwasser et al., 1989.
120Jeffery and Durkin, 1989.
121Palmer, 1988.
122Caron, Nardella et al., 1993.
123See, for example, Hall et al., 1990.
124See, for example, Buckingham, 1993.
125Cantor, Sparks and Hoffner, 1988.
126Calvert et al., 1987; Neuman et al., 1990.
127Kelly and Spear, 1991.
128Calvert et al., 1987.
129Calvert, 1988.
130Weaver et al., 1988.
131Wakshlag, 1985.

Adolescence (children ages 12 to 17)

Television-watching Habits

Adolescents in middle school and high school watch less television than they did when they were younger, since they begin to spend more time away from home, do more things with peers, and listen more to the radio.(1) For many adolescents, this change in media use marks the transition between childhood and adolescence.(2) Popular music becomes the medium most appropriate to the developmental concerns of adolescents — independence, romance, and sexuality — themes that are featured prominently in the lyrics of popular music. Adolescents listen to music alone and with their friends. When they do watch television, they are most likely to watch it with members of their family, since television is the medium of the mainstream culture of their parents.(3)

In one study, American and Italian adolescents who continued to watch television at their pre-adolescent rate also continued to spend more time with family and less with friends and to have a preference for spending time with family.(4) A similar pattern has been reported for Swedish adolescents.(5) Watching television may be one of the few activities that adolescents do with their parents. Out of 1000 "time samples" of adolescents' daily activities, only ten found them spending time alone with their fathers; five out of these ten were times watching television.(6)

Adolescents also watch different programs than they did when they were younger. They still like comedies, but watch fewer cartoons, with the exception of "adult-oriented" animated programs such as The Simpsons (possibly in part because adolescents are sleeping in on Saturday mornings!). Dramas become popular, especially those featuring adolescent characters, such as Beverly Hills 90210 and Blossom. Girls at the end of adolescence start including soap operas in their lists of favourites, and many adolescents include sports fairly often, as well as music programs and science fiction. Crime adventure is a popular choice with American adolescents, but is not often chosen as a favourite by Canadians at this age.(7)

Approach to Processing Information and Watching Television

Adolescence is the period during which young people become capable of abstract reasoning, extracting principles from concrete instances, taking on complex and multiple roles of others, integrating contrasting and contradictory aspects of people and experiences, and extracting what is personally relevant from a complex array of situations. They are no longer so rooted in the immediate present, and can think more about future or hypothetical possibilities.(8)

By early adolescence (i.e. in middle school), children are often adopting multiple meanings of the word "real." ("Real in what way?" is sometimes a counter question when they are asked if something is real.(9)) They can fully articulate what they mean by "real,"(10) one meaning being "plausible" or "probable." The Brady Bunch, while possessing a physically possible refrigerator and even being a possible blending of two families, would be considered "unreal" by this definition if the show didn't portray relationships and human behaviour in a way that is consistent with the viewer's expectations about human nature. Adolescents have considered television families to be "unreal" when, for example, they were too nice to each other, had too few or too many problems, or had surroundings that were too beautiful to be true.(11) There is also a sense, though, of "real" being relative to the adolescents' own lives. As one adolescent said of the Australian soap opera, Neighbours, "It's probably realistic in Australia."(12) Another definition of "real" used at this age is really an aesthetic judgement about the acting and sets, referring to high technical quality that does not draw attention to the fake or constructed nature of the content.

For all their new cognitive and empathic abilities, adolescents rarely use them when they're watching TV. For adolescents, watching television is a passive, relaxing activity requiring low concentration, and they are most likely to do it when they are bored or lonely (much the same way adults do).(13) When adolescents do make use of their more mature cognitive and empathic abilities while watching television, it may have either a positive or a negative influence on the effect that television has on them. For example, they may use these abilities to dismiss what they see on television as unrealistic; conversely, they may use these abilities to improve upon a crime that they have seen on television and are considering committing themselves.

Susceptibility to Imitating Television Violence and Crime

Adolescents are much more likely than younger children to doubt the reality of television content (14) and much less likely to identify with television characters.(15) Those who continue to believe in the reality of television and to identify with its violent heroes are the ones likely to be more aggressive, especially if they continue to fantasise about aggressive-heroic themes.(16)

Although concerns about imitative violence most often focus on pre-schoolers, with their lack of life experience and their belief in television's reality, it is actually copycat crimes or other acts of violence committed by adolescents that most often come to public attention.(17) Programs adolescents are likely to copy are those that demonstrate, in detail, the method of committing a crime. With their superior abstract reasoning ability, adolescents are capable of imagining and planning a real-life re-enactment, including detecting and correcting the gaps or flaws that may have caused the television crime to fail.(18) In addition, their new-found appreciation of the relativity of rightness and wrongness, along with their tendency to challenge conventional authority, probably makes this the only group of viewers with a significant tendency to admire the wrongdoer.(19)

The steps that appear to be necessary for imitation of violent crimes from television and films are:

• strong identification with the movie/program or its hero,
• perseverance through extensive and elaborative fantasy about the program, and
• the capacity to commit the physical act.(20)

An example of an imitated scene in film is the Russian roulette scene from The Deer Hunter, which may have caused an unusually large number of adolescents to identify with it because of its effective portrayal of a warm and committed peer group of young people. The scene was portrayed in a vivid way, using camera techniques (close-ups and shots from the protagonist's point of view) that likely increased identification by the viewer. In addition, the scene was relatively easy for American adolescents to recreate because of their ready access to guns.

In this example, the guns may have contributed more than just the means to commit the act. Sometimes the leap from thoughts to violent actions can be triggered by some cue common to both the adolescent's immediate environment and the "script" of the televised violent events.(21) For some imitators of this scene, the presence of guns in their environment may have brought The Deer Hunter scene to mind. Recent research in the United States suggests that adolescents are particularly vulnerable to imitating televised portrayals of suicide,(22) especially if these portrayals are of real-life events.(23)

Perception of the World from Watching Television

Parents of adolescents are just as worried about the effects of television content on their children's fears as they are about effects on aggression.(24) About 80 percent of adolescents watch horror movies or other material that scares them.(25) Watching violent content contributes to adolescents' sense of the world as a mean place,(26) although even adolescents who watch only a little television appear to feel much more vulnerable to crime than do young adults.(27) However, it appears that adolescents who do not consider the televised violence to be real will not see the world as a mean and scary place or feel an exaggerated sense of personal vulnerability to crime from watching violent or other scary content on television. In addition, adolescents who have been victims of crime or who know someone who has been a victim tend not to rely on television as their source of information about the likelihood of being victimised.(28)

Attraction to Horror Movies, Music Videos and Violent Pornography

Horror movies take on a new importance in the context of adolescents' concerns about sex, romance and further definition of sex roles. One study has found that young men seem to enjoy horror movies more when they are with a visibly frightened woman of the same age, and that young women enjoy horror movies more when they are in the company of a young man who is apparently not frightened.(29) Watching horror movies together, then, may provide an opportunity for boys to comfort (and demonstrate their mastery of frightening situations) and for girls to be comforted, a ritual that is meaningful and pleasing to both in a dating context.

There is, however, some disagreement about the pleasantness of this experience for girls.(30) In another study, adolescent girls reported a much less positive reaction than boys did while watching VCR movies, possibly because of the high frequency with which women are victimised and devalued in the movies (especially horror movies) that adolescents most often watch. Adolescent girls have been reported to be more likely than boys to regret having seen horror movies.(31)

As might be expected, children begin watching more music programming during adolescence, although television is not the preferred medium for popular music.(32) One study of American cable subscribers found that 41 percent of younger adolescents included MTV in the repertoire of channels they used (compared with only 16 percent of their parents, whose average age was in the mid-thirties).(33) In a study of older American adolescents, 80 percent were MTV viewers.(34) As with VCR movies, girls have less positive experiences than boys do from watching music programming (both broadcast and videotape).(35) It has been argued that the high levels of violence toward women and the sexist imagery make music videos less attractive to adolescent girls. However, although both music videos and music television contain well documented sexist and racist imagery(36) and violence,(37) reviews of their content(38) indicate that they are not more violent than prime time TV and that – unlike violent TV – they do not portray women more often than men as the targets of their violence.

A survey of Canadians in the 1980s found that adolescents aged 12 to 17 were the age group most likely to report viewing sexually explicit video material(39). About 38 percent of these adolescents said that they watched such material on television, in movie theatres, or on videocassettes, at least once a month. Canadians in this age group expressed the highest rate of acceptance (35 percent) for sexually violent or degrading material. (The next highest acceptance rate was 12 percent, among Canadians aged 18 to 34.)

The effects of violent pornography on male viewers are indeed worthy of concern. These effects include increased acceptance of violence against women, increased belief in rape myths (for example, that women really want to be raped), and increased tendency to use painful means of punishing women.(40) The effects on girls of watching violent pornography have not been much studied, although one study has found that young women's belief in rape myths was not affected by a film that served to increase those beliefs in young men.(41) It would be reasonable to expect that exposure to violent pornography would increase girls' fears and reduce their self-esteem.

For ethical reasons, most investigations of violent pornography have been done with adults (usually university students). However, it has been argued(42) that adolescents are even more likely than adults to be affected by exposure to violent pornography because:

• even among adults, younger people seem to be more influenced by violent and dehumanising pornography,
• their relative lack of experience and strong interest in sexual relationships may mean that pornography is their first exposure to detailed information about many sexual behaviours, and
• sex education in Canadian schools tends to deal primarily with narrowly biological matters, so that adolescents may turn to media portrayals to learn about the social or interpersonal aspects of sexual relationships.

Suggestions for Parents

Parents impose few restrictions on the amount and types of programs their adolescents watch as they grow older.(43) It may, however, be wise for parents to continue to impose some rules, since adolescents who have no such restrictions are more likely to be fearful and to endorse the stereotypes portrayed on television. This is especially true of adolescents whose relationships with their parents lack warmth and closeness.(44) However, merely maintaining warm and close relationships (a challenge worth pursuing in its own right!) is not necessarily an effective strategy for modifying the influence of television on adolescents.

While watching television together has positive benefits, it has been found that when parents build their family cohesion around television viewing, the negative effects of television are intensified.(45) Under these circumstances, children watch more violence, have more faith in the reality of television portrayals, and say they learn antisocial activities (including aggression) from television.(46) Rather than just watching together, then, it would also be wise for parents to encourage adolescents to express their opinions and to analyse and question television content, since this strategy has been found to reduce adolescents' fears and aggressiveness.(47)

Difficult though it might be for parents and adolescents to discuss matters such as sexual violence, it has been shown that debunking rape myths either before or after exposure to "slasher" films and violent pornography reduces the negative effects of those films on beliefs and attitudes.(48)

Suggestions for the Television Industry

Little programming is available to Canadians that is intended specifically for adolescents, although their viewing patterns indicate an interest in programs that reflect the concerns of adolescents.(49)

Because of adolescents' particular vulnerability and attraction to the theme of suicide, programs that deal with this theme should be handled carefully. The usual pattern of increased incidence of suicide following the broadcast of programs about suicide did not occur when community-based educational campaigns were developed to go along with the televised film about suicide.(50)

Television content that promotes rape myths should definitely be avoided, as should portrayals of mischievous, dangerous, or violent behaviour that seems to promise fun, "kicks," or quick publicity. Program content should also avoid portraying violent behaviour as requiring little effort to achieve consequences that are so awesome and grotesque as to promise instant notoriety or publicity.(51) Rather, television content should portray the downside risks and consequences of violent behaviour in order to discourage adolescents from imitating or endorsing such behaviour.

It might lessen the number of horror and pornographic videos adolescents watch if television programming were provided that addresses the particular needs and interests of adolescents.

Endnotes

1Caron, Frenette et al., 1992, Caron, Nardella et al., 1993, in Canada; Csikszentmihalyi and Larson, 1984, Fine et al., 1990, and Neumann, 1988, in the United States; and Johnsson-Smaragdi, 1983, and Rosengren and Windahl, 1989, in Sweden.
2Larson et al., 1989.
3Indeed, Lull (1990) calls the social use of television an extension of the family.
4Larson et al., 1989; Kubey, 1990; Csikszentmihalyi and Larson, 1984; Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi, 1990.
5Johnsson-Smaragdi, 1983.
6Csikszentmihalyi and Larson, 1984.
7Caron, Nardella et al., 1993; Hawkins, Reynolds and Pingree, 1991; Larson et al., 1989.
8Faber et al., 1986.
9Kelly, 1981.
10Dorr, 1983.
11Kelly 1981 and Buckingham, 1993.
12Buckingham, 1993, p. 230.
13Krendl and Lasky, 1989; Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi, 1990.
14Dorr, 1983.
15Johnsson-Smaragdi, 1983.
16See, for example, Huesmann and Eron, 1984; Dominick, 1984.
17See, for example, Stanley and Riera, 1976; Heller and Polsky, 1976.
18Heller, 1978, cited in Liebert and Sprafkin, 1988.
19Winick and Winick, 1979.
20Wilson and Hunter, 1983.
21Wilson and Hunter, 1983; Huesmann, 1982.
22Phillips and Carstensen, 1986; Gould and Shaffer, 1986; Gould et al., 1988.
23Phillips and Paight, 1987; Kessler and Stipp, 1984.
24Ridley-Johnson et al., 1991.
25Wass, Raup and Sisler, 1989; Cantor and Reilly, 1982.
26Potter and Chang, 1990.
27Potter, 1986.
28Slater and Elliott, 1982; Potter, 1986; Weaver and Wakshlag, 1986.
29Zillmann and Bryant, 1986.
30Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi, 1990.
31Cantor and Reilly, 1982.
32Larson et al., 1989; Caron, Frenette et al., 1992; Caron, Nardella et al., 1993; Greenfield, Bruzzone et al., 1987.
33Heeter et al., 1988.
34Sun and Lull, 1986.
35Larson et al., 1989.
36See, for example, Brown and Campbell, 1986.
37See, for example, Sherman and Dominick, 1986.
38See Gerbner, 1988, for a review of American research and Spears and Seydegart, 1993, for a review of Canadian content.
39Check et al., 1985.
40See, for example, Linz, Donnerstein and Penrod, 1984; see Malamuth and Billings, 1986, Malamuth and Briere, 1986, and Malamuth, 1989, for a review.
41Malamuth and Check, 1981.
42Check and LaCrosse, 1989.
43See, for example, Lin and Atkin, 1989.
44Rothschild and Morgan, 1987.
45Rothschild and Morgan, 1987.
46McLeod and Brown, 1976.
47McLeod and Brown, 1976.
48Linz, Fuson and Donnerstein, 1990; Malamuth and Briere, 1986.
49Caron, Frenette et al., 1992; Caron, Nardella et al., 1993.
50Gould et al., 1988.
51Heller, 1978, cited in Liebert and Sprafkin, 1988, p. 125.

Conclusion

There are certainly things that parents can do to influence the effect that television content has on their children. However, an entertainment medium that purports to meet the needs of the Canadian public should not be so saturated with potentially harmful content that parents are considered negligent if they don't constantly monitor their children's watching. Children whose parents have the motivation and resources to be vigilant and active mediators will likely avoid most of the negative effects of violent content. But not all parents will do that, and, in fact, the children who are otherwise the most vulnerable to the effects of television violence may be the ones whose parents are least likely to be vigilant mediators (for example, abusive parents and parents of families in distress).

It is certainly true that television violence does not account for all the causes of children's aggression, and it is also true that some children are a great deal more likely to be affected by television violence than others, and that it is these children who are likely to be potentially more aggressive anyway. But the effect of television violence leads these "at-risk" children to be even more aggressive than they would otherwise be. And although the group especially at risk might be a minority of viewers, they are likely to be the majority of aggressors. This fact makes them, and the violent content of television, worthy of our attention.

Appendix I: Effects of television violence on especially vulnerable groups

Although it is beyond the scope of this report to discuss the matter in detail, there are groups of children who may be especially vulnerable to the effects of violent television, beyond the developmental considerations that have been raised here. These include:

• Children from minority and immigrant groups.(1)
  
  These children are particularly vulnerable because they tend to watch a great deal of television. Immigrant children may watch entertainment programs with the intent of learning more about the culture of their new country. Children from minority groups may not see many actors from their own culture represented, and those that they do see may be presented in a stereotyped or devalued way (for example, a member of a minority group being presented as the "bad guy"). A particular concern in Canada is the potential of television to "homogenise" cultures in a way that undermines cultural values.

• Children who are emotionally disturbed or who have learning disabilities.(2)
  
  These children may also watch a great deal of television and may prefer violent programs. They are more likely than other children to perceive television content as accurately reflecting the real world, and they may identify with violent characters.
• Children who are abused by parents.(3)
  
  Abused children watch more television than other children do, prefer violent programs, and appear to admire violent heroes. Children who are both abused and watchers of a great deal of television are likely to commit violent crimes later in life.
• Families in distress. Children whose families are under high levels of stress watch more television(4) and may receive less parental mediation of their television viewing and less support from their parents than other children do.

  Endnotes

  1See, for example, Berry and Mitchell-Kernan, 1982; Granzberg, 1985; Greenberg, 1986; and Zohoori, 1988.
  2See Sprafkin et al., 1992, for an extensive review.
  3See Donohue et al., 1988; and Heath et al., 1986.
  4See, for example, Henggeler et al., 1991; Tangney, 1988; and Tangney and Feshbach, 1988.

  ---

Appendix II: Responses to common criticisms of research on the relationship between television violence and aggression.

There are critics who still do not accept the conclusion that violent television increases children's aggressiveness and fears.(1) The following are some typical criticisms that have been raised and responses to these criticisms that are usually made.(2)

• "The jury is still out on the effects of television: the research is inconsistent and flawed."

  This report has reviewed only the research that is relevant to the question of how television violence affects children at different ages. Hundreds of studies have been done that were not reviewed for this report because they did not provide information on the effects of violence at different ages. The large majority of scholars who have studied this body of research have concluded that television does increase children's aggression and fears. Some scholars are not convinced, but they are in the minority. There are some studies that have not shown the effects, but the large majority of them have.

  Although early research (especially from the 1950s and 1960s) was rightly criticised for being flawed, methods have since steadily improved. Designs have been improved, new designs have been adopted, and enough studies have now been done that a consistent pattern of effect has emerged. In fact, it is largely in response to the careful scrutiny of critics that the body of research has evolved to the point where we can now confidently draw the conclusions we do. Even if we consider only those studies that have most thoroughly met the standards of critics,(3) the pattern of results still supports the conclusion that television violence leads to increased aggression.

  As a result, there is widespread agreement among credible authorities that television violence does increase children's aggression and fears. Reports supporting the conclusion have been circulated by the United States Surgeon General,(4) the Royal Commission on Violence in the Communications Industry,(5) the American National Institute of Mental Health,(6) UNESCO,(7) the American Psychological Association,(8) the CRTC,(9) and the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Communications and Culture.(10)

• "The effect is too small to make much difference."

  It is certainly true that, in any study where it has been studied, television violence does not account for all the variability in children's aggression. In most studies, television violence usually ranges somewhere around 10 to 20 percent of the variability.(11) Although this amount may seem small, it holds its own with other important determinants of aggression, such as gender and social class. Human behaviour is complex and multiply determined. No single variable is likely to be a "magic bullet" that accounts entirely for aggression or any other human activity.

• "We don't even have a clear definition of violence."

  It is true that many definitions of violence have been used in the research, but most of these definitions agree that violence involves a character doing deliberate harm to another creature. So we can, in fact, point to the conditions on the screen that are actually responsible for children's aggressiveness. Most Canadians are talking about a shared set of instances and examples when they make statements about television violence.

• "Violence on TV is just reflecting real life."

  The world as portrayed on Prime Time and Saturday morning television is much more violent than real life. Television crime is about 10 times the real-life rate, and most deaths of television characters are violent.(12)

• "Violence is only on TV because that's what people want to watch."

  As pointed out in this report, even though violent television programs tend to be popular with children and some adults, it is not the violence that makes them popular. Other attractive features of programs could be used to gratify audiences instead. George Comstock has suggested that it is really the creators of general audience programming who "welcomed violence as meeting the specifications for the product — conflict visually portrayable, conventions understood by all, attention-drawing action, and repeated crescendos of suspense amenable to punctuation by commercials."(13)

  Endnotes

  1See, for example, Duhs and Gunton, 1988; Freedman 1986 and 1988; Locke, 1974; Lande, 1993; and Stipp and Milavsky, 1988.
  2See, for example, Comstock and Strasburger, 1990; Friedrich-Cofer and Huston, 1986; Rosenthal, 1986; Silver, 1993; and Tan, 1986.
  3For example, Turner et al., 1986; and Wood et al., 1991.
  4Cisin et al., 1972.
  5Royal Commission on Violence in the Communications Industry, 1976.
  6Pearl et al., 1982.
  7Gerbner, 1988.
  8Huston, Donnerstein et al., 1992.
  9Martinez, 1992.
  10Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Communications and Culture, 1993.
  11See, for example, Rosenthal, 1986; and Wood et al., 1991.
  12See, for example, Gerbner, Morgan and Signorielli, 1982.
  13Comstock, 1982.

  ---

Appendix III: Research on the effects of violent video games

There is little research literature on the effects of violent video games on aggressive behaviour.(1) Although both children and their parents tend to evaluate video games more positively than television,(2) television violence and video-game violence are sufficiently similar that one would expect to find children becoming increasingly aggressive from playing violent video games. In fact, one would expect children to become more aggressive from playing video games than from watching television because in playing video games, children are rewarded for being symbolically aggressive.(3) It has been reported that children who play with toy weapons or play a competitive game become as aggressive as children who have been exposed to television violence.(4)

Most studies(5) have found no effects of video game violence on children's aggression, but one study did report that both video games and violent cartoons made children equally more aggressive in their play.(6)

Despite the sparse evidence pointing to the negative effects of violent video games, there are reasons to be cautious about making assumptions that they are harmless. It should be kept in mind that research on televised violence also started out reporting small and relatively benign effects,(7) as well as attracting criticism for its poor methodology. Once researchers understood the medium and the target behaviours well enough to design adequate studies, effects became apparent and were found more consistently. The same may well be true for research on video games.

In addition, the video games that have been the subject of the aggression studies have been fantasy games with non-human targets,(8) and all but one of these have studied the effects on children of elementary school age. Games with human or human-like targets may have much stronger effects, and younger children, who do not distinguish so clearly between reality and fantasy, may be more affected.(9)

Finally, it has been pointed out that violence is not an important part of the appeal of video games for children.(10) It would not be imposing undue hardship on either game developers or child consumers to put resources into the development or purchase of non-violent games – at least until sufficient research has been done on the effects of the games.

Endnotes

1Ledingham et al., 1993.
2Sneed and Runco, 1992.
3Loftus and Loftus, 1983.
4Huston and Wright, 1989; Turner and Goldsmith, 1976; and Rocha and Rogers, 1976.
5Three studies reviewed by Ledingham et al., 1993.
6Silvern and Williamson, 1987.
7Himmelweit et al., 1958; Schramm et al., 1961.
8Loftus and Loftus, 1983.
9Berkowitz and his colleagues (for example, Berkowitz and Geen, 1966) have found that the similarity of real-life and film targets was an important contributor in increasing children's aggression after watching violent films.
10Greenfield, 1984.

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This document is from the For Parents 
Section of the Media Awareness Network
Web site.

Posted by: Media Awareness Network
September 1997

by Berit Kjos

"Who are the strange little creatures from Japan that have suddenly become global super-stars? Most kids know the answer well: They are called Pokemon (short for POCKEt MONster and pronounced Pokeymon), and they have stirred up some mixed reactions.

"We just sent a letter home today saying Pokemon cards are no longer allowed on campus," said Paula Williams, a second-grade teacher in Danville, California. "The kids know they're supposed to be put away when they come in from recess, but they're often in the middle of a trade, so they don't come in on time. In the more extreme cases, the older kids are getting little kids to trade away valuable cards . It drives a teacher crazy."¹ It concerns parents even more. "Recently, my children were given a set of Pokemon cards," said DiAnna Brannan, a Seattle mom. "They are very popular with the children at our church and elsewhere. I was instantly suspicious but couldn't discern the problem. We have since been told that they are stepping stones to the 'Magic cards' that have been popular for the last few years, which we do not allow."

She is right. For instance, any child exploring the most popular Pokemon websites² will be linked to a selection of occult games such as Sailor Moon, Star Wars, and others more overtly evil. A click on the ad for "Magic: the Gathering" brings Pokemon fans to a site offering promotions such as this: "A global games phenomenon, Magic: The Gathering is to the 1990s what Dungeons and Dragons was to the 1980s, but with the added dimension of collectibility. Here is the official reference to the biggest new teen/young adult fantasy game of the decade, complete with full-colour reproductions of every existing Magic card."

THE POKEMON MESSAGE.

The above websites gives us glimpse of the mysterious little creatures called Pokemon. Ponder the suggestions in this greeting:

"Welcome to the world of Pokemon, a special place where people just like you train to become the number-one Pokemon Master in the World!"

"But what is a Pokemon, you ask. 'Pokemon are incredible creatures that share the world with humans,' says Professor Oak, the leading authority on these monster. 'There are currently 150 documented species of Pokemon. . . . Each Pokemon has its own special fighting abilities. . . . Some grow, or evolve, into even more powerful creatures.. . . Carry your Pokemon with you, and you're ready for anything! You've got the power in your hands, so use it!'"³ What if children try to follow this advice? What if they carry their favourite monsters like magical charms or fetishes in their pockets, trusting them to bring power in times of need?

Many do. It makes sense to those who watch the television show. In a recent episode, Ash, the boy hero, had just captured his fifth little Pokemon. But that wasn't good enough, said his mentor. He must catch lots more if he wants to be a Pokemon master. And the more he catches and trains, the more power he will have for future battles.

So Ash sets out again in search for more of the reclusive, power-filled, little Pokemon. His first step is to find the "psychic Pokemon" called Kadabra and snatch it from its telepathic, pink-eyed trainer, Sabrina. With the ghost Haunter on his side, it should be a cinch!

But Ash had underestimated the power of his opponent. When he and Sabrina meet for the battle, both hurl their chosen Pokemon into the air, but only Kadabra evolves into a super-monster with a magic flash. Haunter hides. "Looks like your ghost Pokemon got spooked," taunts Sabrina .

Obviously, Ash didn't understand the supernatural powers he had confronted. Neither do most young Pokemon fans today. Unless they know God and His warnings, they cannot understand the forces that have captivated children around the world. And if parents underestimate the psychological strategies behind its seductive mass marketing ploys, they are likely to dismiss the Pokemon craze as harmless fun and innocent fantasy. In reality, the problem is far more complex.

MARKETING A NEW LIFESTYLE

The Pokemon mania supports a financial conglomerate that knows how to feed the frenzy. The television series is free, but it drives the multi-billion dollar business. It also inspires the obsessive new games that disrupt schools and families by giving the children -- a seductive vision: to become Pokemon masters a tempting promise: supernatural power a new objective: keep collecting Pokemon an urgent command: "gotta catch them all."

These enticements are drilled into young minds through clever ads, snappy slogans, and the "Pokemon rap" at the end of each TV episode:

"I will travel across the land
Searching far and wide Each Pokemon to understand
The power that's inside.
Gotta catch them all!"

The last line, the Pokemon mantra, fuels the craving for more occult cards, games, toys, gadgets, and comic books. There's no end to the supply, for where the Pokemon world ends, there beckons an ever-growing empire of new, more thrilling, occult, and violent products. Each can transport the child into a fantasy world that eventually seems far more normal and exciting than the real world. Here, evil looks good and good is dismissed as boring. Family, relationships, and responsibilities diminish in the wake of the social and media pressures to master the powers unleashed by the massive global entertainment industry.

No wonder children caught up in the Pokemon craze beg for more games and gadgets. The Japanese makers count on it. Since the means often justify the economic ends in the entertainment industry, the Pokemon website is full of tips, explanations, and ads that encourage the urge to splurge and to express the darker side of human nature. Ponder their influence:

"You can catch a Mew by cheating with a Gameshark."

Ahhh. The Gameshark. . . Cheating is not honourable. But many of you have requested and sent me this information, so I have put it up for all you cheaters."

"The Moon Stone evolves certain Pokemon, such as Clefairy."

"Select your desired attack. Hold down the button until your opponent's life stops draining."

"Once you have captured Zapados, you can use it to quickly lower the health level of Articuno. "

"Super Smash Brothers. . . . This unique fighting game features all of Nintendo's biggest stars in a bruising brawl-fest . . . ."

While children delight in these mysterious realms, concerned parents worry and wonder. What kinds of beliefs and values does the Pokemon world and its links teach? Why the emphasis on evolution, supernatural power, and poisoning your opponent?

CHANGING BELIEFS and VALUES

Barbara Whitehorse started seeking answers after her son asked a typical question: "Mom, can I get Pokemon cards? A lot of my friends from church have them." Much as she wanted Matthew to have fun with his friends, she gave a loving refusal. Matthew's tutor had already warned her that the Pokemon craze could stir interest in other kinds of occult role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. At the time, she wondered if the tutor had just over-reacted to some harmless entertainment. After all, the cute little Pokemon creatures looked nothing like the dark demonic creatures of D&D. But when she learned that a local Christian school had banned them because of their link to the occult, she changed her mind.

Later, during a recent party for Matthew, Barbara heard two of the boys discussing their little pocket monsters. One said, "I'll just use my psychic powers." Already, the world of fantasy had coloured his real world. So when some of the kids wanted to watch the afternoon Pokemon cartoon on television, Barb again had to say "no." It's not easy to be parents these days.

Cecile DiNozzi would agree. Back in 1995, her son's elementary school had found a new, exciting way to teach math. The Pound Ridge Elementary school was using Magic: the Gathering, the role-playing game called which, like Dungeons and Dragons, has built a cult following among people of all ages across the country.

Mrs. DiNozzi refused to let her son participate in the "Magic club." But a classmate gave him one of the magic cards, which he showed his mother. It was called "Soul exchange" and pictured spirits rising from graves. Like all the other cards in this ghastly game, it offered a morbid instruction:

"Sacrifice a white creature."

"What does 'summon' mean?" he asked his mother after school one day.

"Summon? Why do you ask?"

He told her that during recess on the playground the children would "summon" the forces on the cards they collect by raising sticks into the air and saying, "'Spirits enter me.' They call it 'being possessed.'" ⁵

Strange as it may sound to American ears, demonic possession is no longer confined to distant lands. Today, government schools from coast to coast are teaching students the skills once reserved for the tribal witchdoctor or shaman in distant lands. Children everywhere are learning the pagan formulas for invoking "angelic" or demonic spirits through multicultural education, popular books, movies, and television. It's not surprising that deadly explosions of untamed violence suddenly erupt from "normal" teens across our land.

Occult role-playing games teach the same dangerous lessons. They also add a sense of personal power and authority through personal identification with godlike superheroes. Though the demonic realm hasn't changed, today's technology, media, and multicultural climate makes it easier to access, and harder than ever to resist its appeal.

ROLE-PLAY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ADDICTION

The televised Pokemon show brings suggestions and images that set the stage for the next steps of entanglement. It beckons the young spectator to enter the manipulative realm of role-play, where fantasy simulates reality, and the buyer becomes a slave to their programmer.

Remember, in the realm of popular role-playing games * whether it's Pokemon, Magic the Gathering, or other selections -- the child becomes the master. As in contemporary witchcraft, he or she wields the power. Their arm, mind, or power-symbol (the Pokemon or other action figure) become the channel for the spiritual forces. Children from Christian homes may have learned to say, "Thy will be done," but in the role-playing world, this prayer is twisted into "My will be done!" God, parents, and pastors no longer fit into the picture fanaticised by the child.

Psychologists have warned that role-playing can cause the participant to actually experience, emotionally, the role being played. Again, "the child becomes the master." Or so it seems to the player.

Actually, the programmer who writes the rules is the master. And when the game includes occultism and violence, the child-hero is trained to use "his" or "her" spiritual power to kill, poison, evolve, and destroy - over and over. Not only does this repetitive practice blur the line between reality and fantasy, it also sears the conscience and causes the player to devalue life. The child learns to accept unthinkable behaviour as "normal" .

To be a winner within this system, the committed player must know and follow the rules of the game. Obedience becomes a reflex, strengthened by instant rewards or positive reinforcement. The rules and rewards force the child to develop new habits and patterned responses to certain stimuli. Day after day, this powerful psychological process manipulates the child's thoughts, feelings, and actions, until his or her personality changes and, as many parents confirm, interest in ordinary family life begins to wither away.

You may have recognised those preceding terms as those often used by behavioural psychologists. They point to a sophisticated system of operant conditioning or behaviour modification. The child must exercise his own intelligent mind to learn the complex rules. But after learning the rules, the programmed stimuli produce conditioned responses in the player. These responses become increasingly automatic, a reflex action.

Naturally, this can leads to psychological addiction, a craving for ever greater (and more expensive) thrills and darker forces.

WHAT CAN PARENTS DO?

It's hard to teach restraint to children who are begging for gratification. Wanting to please rather than overreact, we flinch at the thought of being called censors once again. Parental authority simply doesn't fit the fast-spreading new views of social equality taught through the media and schools. Yet, we must obey God. He has told us to train our children to choose His way (Proverbs 22:6), and we can't turn back now.

If you share my concerns, you may want to follow these suggestions. They will help you equip your child with the awareness needed to resist occult entertainment:

1. First, look at God's view of contemporary toys, games and cartoons. As a family, read Scriptures such as Ephesians 5:8-16, 6:10-18 (the armour of God); Philippians 4:8-9; and Colossians 2:9. Compare them with the values encouraged by Pokemon and other role-playing games.

2. Share your observations. Spark awareness in a young child with comments such as, "That monster looks mean!" or "That creature reminds me of a dragon," along with "Did you know that in the Bible, serpents and dragons always represent Satan and evil?"

3. To teach young children a Biblical attitude toward evil before they learn to delight in gross, ugly characters, make comments such as, "Who would want to play with that evil monster? I don't even like to look at him. Let's find something that makes us feel happy inside."

4. Model wise decision-making. Tell your child why you wouldn't want to buy certain things for yourself.

When your child wants a questionable game or toy, ask questions that are prayerfully adapted to your child's age, such as:

1. What does this game teach you (about power, about magic, about God, about yourself)?

Discuss both obvious and subtle messages.

2. Does it have anything to do with supernatural power? If so, what is the source of that power? Does it oppose or agree with God's Word?

3. What does it teach about violence or immorality and their consequences?

4. Does the game or toy have symbols or characteristics that link it to New Age or occult powers?

5. Does it build Godly character?

In a nation consumed with self-indulgence, self-fulfilment, and self-empowerment, godly self-denial seems strangely out of place. But God commanded it, and Jesus demonstrated it. Dare we refuse to acknowledge it? According to the age of your child, discuss Jesus' words in Matthew 16:24-26, then allow the Holy Spirit to direct your application.

Far more than earthly parents, God wants His children to be content and full of joy. But He knows better than to give us all the things we want. Instead, He gave us His word as a standard for what brings genuine peace and happiness. The apostle Paul summarised it well:

"Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy let your mind dwell on these things." (Philippians 4:7-8)

After hearing God's warning and praying for His wisdom, nine-year-old Alan Brannan decided to throw away all his Pokemon cards. "My friend did the same," said his mother. "Her twelve year old son had been having nightmares.

But after a discussion with his parents about the game and its symbols, he was convicted to burn his cards and return his Gameboy game. That night slept well for the first time in a month."

"It seemed to us that these cards had some sort of power," continued DiAnna Brannan. "Another nine-year-boy had stolen money from his mother's purse ($7.00) to buy more cards. When questioned, he confessed and said he had heard the devil urging him to do it. The family quickly gathered in prayer, then saw God's answer. Both the boy and his little sister burned their cards, warned their friends, and discovered the joy and freedom that only comes from following their Shepherd.

Endnotes

1. Laura Evenson, "Seeing Red and Blue at Schools," San Francisco Chronicle, April 20, 1999.

2. http://www.pokemon.com and http://www.wizards.com/Pokemon/Rules/Welcome.html

3. http://www.wizards.com/Pokemon/Rules/Welcome.html

4. "Haunter versus Kadabra," aired on May 20, 1999.

5. Transcribed from a recorded interview with Cecile DiNozzi in Pound Ridge, New York.

For more information about "lifelong" training in the new global values, read Brave New Schools (Harvest House Publishers) and A Twist of Faith (New Leaf Press - 800-643-9535) by Berit Kjos. Available through Christian bookstores web site: www.crossroad.com 1 800-643-9535.

Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education

Contents

Video Game Use by Children
Rating Video Game Violence
Effects of Violence in Video Games
Effects of Other Characteristics of Video Games
Conclusion
For More Information

Related Articles

Pull the Plug on TV and Video Game Violence Week

Video games were first introduced in the 1970s. By the end of that decade they had become a preferred childhood leisure activity, and adults responded with concern about the possible ill effects of the games on children. Early research on these effects was inconclusive. However, a resurgence in video game sales that began in the late 1980s after the introduction of the Nintendo system has renewed interest in examining the effects of video games.

Some research suggests that playing video games may affect some children's physical functioning. Effects range from triggering epileptic seizures to causing heart rate and blood pressure changes. Serious adverse physical effects, however, are transient or limited to a small number of players. Research has also identified benefits associated with creative and prosocial uses of video games, as in physical rehabilitation and oncology (Funk, 1993). Proponents of video games suggest that they may be a friendly way of introducing children to computers, and may increase children's hand-eye co-ordination and attention to detail.

Video Game Use by Children

Recent studies of television watching by children have included measures of the time children spend playing video games. In 1967, the average sixth-grader watched 2.8 hours of television per day. Data from 1983 indicated that sixth-graders watched 4.7 hours of television per day, and spent some additional time playing video games.

A recent study (Funk, 1993) examined video game playing among 357 seventh and eighth grade students. The adolescents were asked to identify their preference among five categories of video games. The two most preferred categories were games that involved fantasy violence, preferred by almost 32% of subjects; and sports games, some of which contained violent sub-themes, which were preferred by more than 29%. Nearly 20% of the students expressed a preference for games with a general entertainment theme, while another 17% favoured games that involved human violence. Fewer than 2% of the adolescents preferred games with educational content.

The study found that approximately 36% of male students played video games at home for 1 to 2 hours per week; 29% played 3 to 6 hours; and 12 percent did not play at all. Among female students who played video games at home, approximately 42% played 1 to 2 hours and 15% played 3 to 6 hours per week. Nearly 37% of females did not play any video games. The balance of subjects played more than 6 hours per week. Results also indicated that 38% of males and 16% of females played 1 to 2 hours of video games per week in arcades; and that 53% of males and 81% of females did not play video games in arcades.

Back to the Top

Rating Video Game Violence

Ratings of video game violence have developed as an extension of ratings of television violence. Among those organisations that have attempted to rate television violence, the National Coalition on Television Violence (NCTV) has also developed a system to rate the violent content of video games. The NCTV system contains ratings that range from XUnfit and XV (highly violent) to PG and G ratings. Between summer and Christmas of 1989, NCTV surveyed 176 Nintendo video games. Among the games surveyed, 11.4% received the XUnfit rating. Another 44.3% and 15.3% received the other violent ratings of XV and RV, respectively. A total of 20% of games received a PG or G rating (NCTV, 1990).

The Sega company, which manufactures video games, has developed a system for rating its own games as appropriate for general, mature, or adult audiences, which it would like to see adopted by the video game industry as a whole. The Nintendo company, in rating its games, follows standards modelled on the system used by the Motion Picture Association of America.

A problem shared by those who rate violence in television and video games is that the definition of violence is necessarily subjective. Given this subjectivity, raters have attempted to assess antisocial violence more accurately by ranking violent acts according to severity, noting the context in which violent acts occur, and considering the overall message as pro- or anti- violence. However, the factor of context is typically missing in video games. There are no grey areas in the behaviour of game characters, and players are rarely required to reflect or make contextual judgements (Provenzo, 1992).

Back to the Top

Effects of Violence in Video Games

The NCTV claims that there has been a steady increase in the number of video games with violent themes. Games rated as extremely violent increased from 53% in 1985 to 82% in 1988. A 1988 survey indicated that manufacturers were titling their games with increasingly violent titles (NCTV, 1990). Another survey found that 40 of the 47 top-rated Nintendo video games had violence as a theme.

An early study on the effects of video games on children found that playing video games had more positive effects on children than watching television. A conference sponsored by Atari at Harvard University in 1983 presented preliminary data which failed to identify ill effects. More recent research, however, has begun to find connections between children's playing of violent video games and later aggressive behaviour. A research review done by NCTV (1990) found that 9 of 12 research studies on the impact of violent video games on normal children and adolescents reported harmful effects. In general, while video game playing has not been implicated as a direct cause of severe psycho-pathology, research suggests that there is a short-term relationship between playing violent games and increased aggressive behaviour in younger children (Funk, 1993).

Because it is likely that there is some similarity in the effect of viewing violent television programs and playing violent video games on individuals' aggressive behaviour, those concerned with the effects of video games on children should take note of television research. The consensus among researchers on television violence is that there is a measurable increase of from 3% to 15% in individuals' aggressive behaviour after watching violent television. A recent report of the American Psychological Association claimed that research demonstrates a correlation between viewing and aggressive behaviour (Clark, 1993).

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Effects of Other Characteristics of Video Games

Some adults believe that video games offer benefits over the passive medium of television. Among mental health professionals, there are those who maintain that in playing video games, certain children can develop a sense of proficiency which they might not otherwise achieve. However, other authorities speculate that performing violent actions in video games may be more conducive to children's aggression than passively watching violent acts on television. According to this view, the more children practice violence acts, the more likely they are to perform violent acts (Clark, 1993). Some educational professionals, while allowing that video games permit children to engage in a somewhat creative dialogue, maintain that this engagement is highly constrained compared to other activities, such as creative writing (Provenzo, 1992).

Another problem seen by critics of video games is that the games stress autonomous action rather than co-operation. A common game scenario is that of an anonymous character performing an aggressive act against an anonymous enemy. One study (Provenzo, 1992) found that each of the top 10 Nintendo video games was based on a theme of an autonomous individual working alone against an evil force. The world of video games has little sense of community and few team players. Also, most video games do not allow play by more than one player at a time.

The social content of video games may influence children's attitudes toward gender roles. In the Nintendo games, women are usually cast as persons who are acted upon rather than as initiators of action; in extreme cases, they are depicted as victims. One study (Provenzo, 1992) found that the covers of the 47 most popular Nintendo games depicted a total of 115 male and 9 female characters; among these characters, 20 of the males struck a dominant pose while none of the females did. Thirteen of the 47 games were based on a scenario in which a woman is kidnapped or has to be rescued.

Studies have indicated that males play video games more frequently than females. Television program producers and video game manufacturers may produce violent shows and games for this audience. This demand for violence may not arise because of an innate male desire to witness violence, but because males are looking for strong role models, which they find in these shows and games (Clark, 1993).

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Conclusion

Given inconclusive research, recommendations concerning video games must be conservative. According to researcher Jeanne Funk (1993), a ban on video games is:

probably not ... in the child's best interests. Limiting playing time and monitoring game selection according to developmental level and game content may be as important as similar parental management of television privileges. Parents and professionals should also seek creative ways to increase the acceptance, popularity, and availability of games that are relatively prosocial, educational, and fun. (p.89)

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For More Information

Clark, C.S. (1993). TV Violence. CQ Researcher 3(12, Mar26): 167-187.

De Franco, E.B. (1989). Are Your Kids Too Tuned In? PTA Today , May): 18-19. EJ 414 201.

Funk, J.B. (1993). Re-evaluating the Impact of Video Games. Clinical Paediatrics 32 (2, Feb): 86-90. PS 521 243.

Kubey, R. and Larson, R. (1990). The Use and Experience of the New Video Media among Children and Young Adolescents. Communication Research 17(1): 107-130. EJ 406 646.

National Coalition on Television Violence. (1990). Nintendo Tainted by Extreme Violence. NCTV News 11(1-2, Feb-Mar):1, 3-4.

Provenzo, E.F., Jr. (1992). The Video Generation. American School Board Journal 179(3, Mar): 29-32. EJ 441 136.

References identified with an EJ (ERIC journal) or PS number are cited in the ERIC database. Articles are available from the original journal, interlibrary loan services, or article reproduction clearinghouses, such as: UMI (800) 732-0616; or ISI (800) 523-1850.

This publication was prepared with funding from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, under OERI contract no DERR3002007. The opinions expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of OERI or the Department of Education.

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About ERIC/EECE Digests....

ERIC/EECE Digests are short reports on topics of current interest in education. Digests are targeted to teachers, administrators, parents, policy makers, and other practitioners. They are designed to provide an overview of information on a given topic and references to items that provide more detailed information. Reviewed by subject experts who are content specialists in the field, the digests are funded by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) of the U.S. Department of Education.

All ERIC/EECE Digests are available free in original printed form directly from the clearinghouse. For additional information on this topic, please contact ERIC/EECE directly at ericeece@uiuc.edu or 1-800-583-4135.

Credits

ERIC Digest
EDO-PS-94-3
January 1994

Violence on Television

By Susan Alter
Law and Government Division, for the Library of Parliament, October 1997
Republished with permission.
 

Issue Definition
Background and Analysis:
    A. Defining TV Violence
    B. Studying TV Violence
    C. Dealing with TV Violence:
        1. Public Awareness and Education Initiatives
        2. Technological Devices
        3. Classification/Rating Systems
        4. Codes on Violent Programming
            (Chart of Violence Codes Across the Canadian Broadcasting System)
        5. Constitutional Protection of Freedom of Expression
Parliamentary Action:
   A. Broadcasting Act
   B. Criminal Code
Chronology
Selected References

Issue Definition

The North American public’s concern over the potentially harmful effects of violent television programming dates back to at least 1952, when the U.S. Congress held its first hearings on this issue. Over the years, while technological advancements, such as computer-enhanced special effects and VCRs, enabled violence on the small screen to become more graphic and pervasive, research into the actual impact of such imagery mushroomed.

Although the research produced conflicting conclusions, the dominant opinion today is that television violence does have a negative influence, especially on impressionable viewers such as children. The film and television industry, which tended in the past steadfastly to dismiss concerns about violent entertainment as unfounded and unproven, has been under considerable pressure in the 1990s to take positive steps to deal with such programming. Jack Valenti, representing the Motion Picture Association of America, one of the most powerful voices in the industry, told an American Senate Committee examining television violence in 1993 that the industry would no longer deny that a problem exists: "We are past that. We want to challenge this issue responsibly, without doing a political minuet around a metaphysical maypole."

This publication will summarize the key findings of research into violence on television and outline the measures being taken in Canada to deal with the problem. The regulatory approach of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission and related concerns about freedom of expression will be among the specific topics discussed.

Background and Analysis

A. Defining TV Violence

"Television violence" usually refers to all the violence appearing on TV screens. It includes material broadcast over the air, distributed by cable and satellite systems, and available on videocassettes and disks.

A common understanding or definition of what constitutes "television violence" could be useful in helping to examine and regulate the problem. But arriving at such an understanding is no simple matter. Should the definition include animated portrayals or only realistic depictions? Should the context in which the violence is presented matter -- for example, whether the violence is gratuitous or integral to the plot or purpose of a program, whether it is physical or verbal, or whether it is directed at people, animals or objects?

The problem with a very precise definition of television violence is that it may also be quite restrictive. The definition at one time used by media specialist George Gerbner in his research is a case in point: "the act of injuring or killing someone or the threat of injuring or killing someone." Recent studies have framed violence in slightly broader terms. The National Television Violence Study (1996), funded by the National Cable Television Association in the U.S., for example, considered violence to be: "Any overt depiction of the use of physical force -- or the credible threat of such force -- intended to physically harm an animate being or group of beings." The UCLA Television Violence Monitoring Project (1995), commissioned by four major American networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC), defined violence as anything that involves physical harm or a threat of physical harm of any sort, intentional or unintentional, self-inflicted or inflicted by someone or something else.

Another approach is to avoid defining "violence" in finite terms, instead explaining it through examples. Canada’s private broadcasters’ voluntary code for regulating violence on television takes this approach. The code, while it requires broadcasters to exercise caution in depicting violence, never actually defines "violence," but lists examples of potentially violent scenarios, including situations of conflict or confrontation, death and injury, street crime, and sexual assault. The problem with this method is that television violence may be outlined in too open-ended and fluid a manner to be practical.

Given the many types of television violence, arriving at a standard definition that is comprehensive, yet succinct and unambiguous, could be a daunting task.

B. Studying TV Violence

American surveys of violent programming, done in the 1970s and ’80s, found that the level of violence on American commercial television remained constant, averaging five to six violent acts per hour in prime time and 20 to 25 violent acts per hour on Saturday morning children’s programs. But these studies concentrated on conventional television and did not take into account all the material watched via newer television technologies such as cable, video and satellite services. Adding these to the mix would likely have shown the amount of violence on television to be rising. As well, none of these studies canvassed changes in the nature of the violence portrayed over the years -- for example, whether television violence had become more graphic or more callous.

Studies of Canadian television programming, including a 1994 report by Laval University’s Guy Paquette and Jacques De Guise, have demonstrated that Canadian-made programming is generally less violent than American. The Paquette-De Guise study found the violence index for Canadian television, calculated during one week in March 1993 using the Gerbner method, was 23.4% lower than that for American television. But the less violent Canadian TV fare is not the only programming watched in this country.

The large volume of American television shows flowing across our borders means that American productions undoubtedly contribute in a material way to the amount of violence seen on Canadian TV screens. Thus, it is instructive to note George Gerbner’s 1986 report on world-wide research into media violence prepared for UNESCO, which found American programs were significantly more violent than those made in other countries. The only exception to this general rule was Japanese programming, which was found to be equally violent.

American research has shown, as well, that popular American films are even more violent than American television programming -- a situation of note to Canadians since our domestic home-video market is saturated with American products. For example, media violence experts Ed Donnerstein, Ron Slaby and Leonard Eron, reporting in 1993 on the mass media and youth aggression for the American Psychological Association, noted that blockbuster, Hollywood action films (such as Die Hard 2, Robocop and Total Recall, containing 264, 81 and 74 violent deaths respectively) were far more violent than programming made for commercial prime time TV. The National Television Violence Study (1996) and the UCLA Television Violence Monitoring Project (1995 and 1996) corroborated this finding.

In these two on-going comprehensive studies of violence on American television, qualitative analysis prevails over quantitative information. For instance, the focus of the UCLA Television Violence Monitoring Project (1995 and 1996) was on the context surrounding each act of violence featured, rather than simply on the number of violent acts shown per hour. The project distinguished between depictions involving the meaningless glorification of violence and depictions in which violence was linked with a social message. In other words, a value judgment was attached to every act of violence tabulated, based on the premise that "all violence is not created equal." Among other things, the UCLA study found that programming controlled by the networks, such as network series and made-for-television movies, raised relatively fewer issues of concern than did other formats, such as the films shown on television that had been made for theatrical release. Context was also an important feature of the National Television Violence Study (1996), which identified patterns in portrayals of violence. For example, it found that in the programming sampled: perpetrators went unpunished in 73% of all violent scenes; the negative consequences of violence were often not portrayed; 25% of violent interactions involved handguns; and only 4% of violent programs emphasized an anti-violence theme.

The main controversy over television violence, which raged in social science circles for years, did not concern the types of studies mentioned above, which measure and compare the nature of violent programming. Rather, the real point of contention was the issue of cause and effect -- whether watching violent programming causes individuals to exhibit violent behaviour. Although a direct, causal relationship is difficult to establish, three major American studies, spanning 30 years altogether, each found a positive correlation or link between children’s viewing of violence on television and aggressive attitudes and behaviours. These studies are: a report to the Surgeon General on the impact of televised violence, released at the end of 1971; the National Institute of Mental Health’s follow-up to the report to the Surgeon General, ten years later; and the 1992 report of the American Psychological Association’s Committee on Media in Society.

While the preponderance of research and reports on television violence finds a connection between televised violence and real violence, some experts remain quite sceptical. For example, Canadian psychologist Jonathan Freedman concedes that children who watch more violent television also tend to be more aggressive, but, he argues, field experiments have not proven, consistently and as a matter of incontrovertible scientific fact, that watching violent television actually causes viewers to become more aggressive.

Unanimous agreement may never be reached on whether and how television violence affects audiences, but the bulk of the literature amassed on this subject concludes that violence on television could produce at least three negative effects. It has been associated with viewers exhibiting increased aggression or violence toward others (the aggressor effect); increased fearfulness about becoming a victim of violence (the victim effect); and increased insensitivity about violence among others (the bystander effect).

C. Dealing with TV Violence

By the early 1990s, many media violence specialists, including America’s Ed Donnerstein, Ron Slaby and Leonard Eron, believed that the interminable debate over the causal relationship between real violence and violence on television should stop. They maintained that the time had come to simply recognize television violence is a problem and do something about it. More and more Canadians seem to share this view and are taking steps to deal with the television violence bombarding our children and youth. Action is taking place on a variety of fronts -- educational, technological, and regulatory -- as described below.

1. Public Awareness and Education Initiatives

The objective of public awareness and education initiatives is to help viewers make informed and responsible choices about the types of television programs they, or those in their charge, watch. Broadcasters and cable companies have launched projects attempting to heighten public awareness of violence in much the same way that the harmful effects of smoking and drunk driving were brought to the public’s attention through media campaigns. The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB), for example, in association with the Department of Canadian Heritage, launched a series of public service announcements in 1994 under the banner "Speak Out Against Violence." Building on this effort, CAB joined with several government departments in 1996 to launch a national campaign, "Violence - You Can Make a Difference," which tried to encourage Canadians to take action against violence. The Canadian Cable Television Association in 1993 held its "Stop the Silence on Violence" campaign, which informed subscribers about non-violent viewing alternatives and ways of dealing proactively with violence in society.

Sceptics feel it is naive to expect the industry to become a strong opponent of television violence. They point out that, as long as violent programming continues to draw consistently large audiences, broadcasters and cable companies -- who are in business to make a profit through audience-dependent advertising or subscription revenues -- will only pay lip-service to campaigns against such programming.

Since parents and schools are primarily responsible for educating our children, they bear much of the responsibility for teaching them about coping with the violence on television. Educators are embracing the challenge, in part, by teaching their students to become "media literate."

Ontario educator Barry Duncan explains that, while literacy focuses on the written word (the ability to read and write and the skills needed to decode and construct printed words), "media literacy" is about decoding the mass media, especially television. It engages viewers in a process called "deconstruction," whereby they take apart a program’s constructed reality and look critically at its underlying values and messages. Someone who is media literate understands the techniques and tricks that go into a production, including its portrayal of violence, and, therefore, can view it from social, ethical and other perspectives and not purely as entertainment. Ontario’s Ministry of Education became a pioneer and leader in media literacy in 1988, by formally mandating that it be part of the English curriculum in the province’s high schools.

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Communications and Culture, in its 1993 report on television violence, said that parents too should play a pivotal role in guiding and regulating the viewing habits of their children. The Committee observed, however, that it would be unrealistic to place such a burden on parents, without providing adequate media literacy training and technological assistance.

In order to foster media literate citizens and healthier viewing choices, the federal government, alone and in partnership with interested groups, has been developing educational materials. For example, Prime Time Parent, a do-it-yourself media literacy kit for parents, consisting of videos, booklets and activity cards, was developed and launched in the summer of 1995 by the Alliance for Children and Television, with the support of Health Canada; and the National Film Board has been assembling an interesting selection of media education resources, including Christopher Hinton’s Watching TV, a short animated film about television violence, and Constructing Reality, a six-video anthology exploring media issues in documentary film. In 1996, the Media Awareness Network, supported by private sector and federal government funding, launched its web site to serve as an electronic clearing house for media awareness material, including information related to violence on television.

2. Technological Devices
 

Technological controls can help parents become better programming gatekeepers. Such controls include devices that allow individual programs to be filtered out, entire channels to be blocked, or TV sets and remote controls to be locked, barring young children from turning on equipment by themselves.

The tool that has received the most attention is the V-chip system, invented by B.C. engineer Tim Collings. Any program receiver (i.e., any converter, VCR, tuner or TV set) housing a tiny integrated circuit called the "V-chip" can be programmed to suit individual tastes by blocking out potentially offensive subject matter. With the help of the V-chip, the receiver is able to read the ratings that have been assigned to programs and encoded in their video signals, and to block out those that exceed an individual’s pre-selected threshold for violent content.

Since the V-chip must be able to read a pre-programmed rating in order to work, the development of an appropriate rating system for television programming was key to the successful introduction of V-chip technology. Field-testing and fine-tuning the V-chip, therefore, had to be done in tandem with development of a television program rating system for use in Canada. The CRTC provided added impetus to early efforts to design a V-chip responsive to a Canadian television rating system when it formally prescribed deadlines for putting these two initiatives in place across the country, in its March 1996 policy for dealing with violence on television.

That policy called on the cable companies to make affordable V-chip devices available to subscribers by September 1996 (Public Notice CRTC 1996-36). This deadline was later extended to the debut of the 1997 fall television season, to allow the industry to continue to field test V-chip technology before the market roll-out (Public Notice CRTC 1996-134).

With the arrival of the fall 1997 viewing season, V-chip technology had not yet made its way into the hands of Canadian television viewers; but, a new deadline was not set. Instead, the CRTC said that it expects program encoding to be implemented and V-chip devices to be deployed as soon as is feasible. In its June 1997 notice approving a Canadian classification system for violent television programs (Public Notice CRTC 1997-80), the CRTC recognised that the fall 1997 target date would not be met. It noted that a number of issues remain to be resolved before V-chip technology could be made available to Canadian consumers. One obstacle, for instance, is that the current technology cannot accommodate the multiplicity of rating systems coming into use. In addition, full-scale manufacturing of V-chip boxes for Canadians is not likely to begin until the V-chip is also ready be introduced to the larger American market.

In the United States, the Telecommunications Act, passed in early 1996, requires new television sets to be equipped with a V-chip type of program-blocking feature, as specified in section 551. As was the case in Canada, however, the V-chip system that is ultimately introduced to American consumers will partly depend on the classification system that is finally approved for use by the U.S. federal communications regulator (the FCC). Until that decision is made, deployment of the V-chip will continue to be put on hold in the United States and, consequently, postponed in Canada.

The greatest advantage of the V-chip system is that it allows parents to supervise all their children’s home television viewing, without the parents having to stay "glued" to the TV set. Sceptics are quick to point out, however, that the V-chip, for a variety of reasons, does not represent a panacea. Critics from the broadcasting industry argue that assigning ratings to programs for the V-chip to read will be a Herculean task, since hundreds of thousands of hours of programming are shown on television each year. They are also nervous that advertisers will shy away from purchasing advertising spots in programs with a high violence rating, based on the assumption that audiences for such programs will decline and to avoid the possible stigma associated with supporting anti-social television. Other critics point out that the technology is only as good as its users; parents may not want to use it or may not know how to do so and their children may find ways to circumvent it. Some worry that programmers will use the existence of the V-chip as an excuse to air even more violent programming, feeling its existence absolves them of their social responsibilities. Others think the V-chip misses the mark completely, since it only results in good warnings on bad programming.

 The Action Group on Violence on Television (AGVOT), made up of members of the film and television industry, voluntarily assumed the responsibility of inventing a television program classification system in 1993. This industry initiative was bolstered by the CRTC’s 1996 policy on violence in television programming which directed the broadcasting industry, via AGVOT, to develop an informative and user-friendly rating system. The deadline set by the CRTC for having the rating system in place was originally September 1996 (Public Notice CRTC 1996-36), but was later extended, at AGVOT’s request, to the launch of the 1997 fall viewing season (Public Notice CRTC 1996-134).

In keeping with the fall 1997 target date, AGVOT submitted its proposed six-level classification system to the CRTC on 30 April 1997; in June, the CRTC announced that it had approved this system (Public Notice CRTC 1997 - 80). It will be used to classify all programs, except for those types exempt from being rated; for example, news, sports, documentaries, talk shows, music videos and variety shows. The six levels of program ratings are accompanied by descriptive guidelines to help programming services assign ratings to their programs on an age-appropriate basis. The six categories for classification purposes are: "Children; Children 8 and over; General Audience; Parental Guidance; 14 years and older; and 18 years and older." The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council will serve as a clearing house for information on the new rating system and as an arbitrator in any disagreements arising between viewers and programming services over the classifications assigned to particular shows.

Although the pay television, pay-per-view and French-language services were represented on AGVOT’s classification committee, current plans are for the new classification system to be used only by English-language conventional stations and networks and English-language specialty services. All other English- and French-language broadcasting services will continue to use the provincial film and video rating systems. It should be noted, however, that, in approving its classification system in June, the Commission urged AGVOT to continue to work towards harmonising all the television programming classification systems. Also, since technical and other circumstances did not allow for the newly approved classification system to be launched in conjunction with V-chip technology, the Commission agreed to AGVOT’s suggestion that on-screen program classification icons be introduced in the fall season.

Development of the U.S. television program rating system has been unfolding concurrently with Canada’s system, but under somewhat different circumstances. The American television industry was drawn into creating a "voluntary" rating system for television by the Telecommunications Act (1996), which declared that the government would step in and create a system if the industry did not do so within a certain timeframe. In January 1997, the U.S. television industry submitted its proposed six-level rating system, the "TV Parental Guidelines," to the FCC, which in February formally called for comments on this proposal. In August, the industry submitted a revised proposal and the FCC issued a renewed call for comments. The FCC must now assess the voluntary rating system, which is very similar to the American movie rating system. If it finds the voluntary system acceptable, the FCC will establish technological standards to ensure this system can be handled by the parental control technology (V-chip technology) to be built into television sets manufactured after February 1998.

One of AGVOT’s goals, supported by the CRTC, has been to make the Canadian rating system compatible with its U.S. counterpart, in other words, to strive for a North American TV program classification system. Such a system would certainly be more convenient for Canadian broadcasters and program distributors who show American programming, since they would not have to re-encode the U.S. programming according to a uniquely Canadian rating scheme. It remains to be seen, however, whether the Canadian and U.S. systems can be harmonized.

In approving the AGVOT rating system in June 1997, the CRTC commented that this system and the U.S. industry’s TV Parental Guidelines appear, despite some variations, to be similar enough to avoid unduly confusing Canadian consumers. The CRTC also acknowledged, however, that the U.S. rating system has yet to be endorsed by the FCC. Noting AGVOT’s intention to review and, if necessary and appropriate, amend the Canadian rating system once the American system has been finalised, the Commission pointed out that it would have to approve any substantive amendments.

In summary, three different television program rating systems are now being used by companies providing Canadian television programming services: the provincial film boards’ rating systems used by pay television and pay-per-view services, the AGVOT rating system used by English-language conventional broadcasters and specialty services, and the Quebec Régie du cinema system used by French-language broadcasters. In addition, the Americans are well-advanced in the development of their own television rating system. Although a uniform, North America-wide TV program classification system remains a worthwhile goal, it is unclear, at this point, whether it will ever be achieved.

4. Codes on Violent Programming

Complementing the television program classification systems are the ethical codes or codes of conduct which govern violent programming. Whereas the classification systems provide a benchmark against which parents can assess which programs their children may watch and whether supervision is required, the codes establish the rules according to which the industry will guide itself when selecting and scheduling programming with violent content.

Codes on violence in television programming provide a set of uniform rules or guidelines that broadcasters and other program providers agree to follow. The codes usually establish general rules to govern violent programming, such as a ban on the broadcasting of gratuitous violence, as well as specific rules about the portrayal of violence, designed to protect children and other vulnerable groups. For example, they may establish "watershed hours" (hours after which scenes of violence intended only for adult viewing may be aired), mandate the use of program advisories to warn viewers when a program might be particularly offensive, and so forth.

The CRTC has been actively encouraging each segment of the television broadcasting system -- privately owned networks and stations, cable providers, and the CBC -- to develop codes to govern the violent content in their schedules. Compliance with the codes is made a condition of operating licences. The results of these efforts are summarized by the chart below.

No code applies to violent U.S. programming distributed via Canadian cable systems. The CRTC hinted in its March 1996 policy on television violence, that in order to fill this void it might in the future require cable distributors to scramble the signal for any programming they receive from the U.S. that would contravene an existing, approved code, such as the CAB code. Meanwhile, the experimental success and imminent roll-out of a V-chip based program classification system, which would to apply to this so far unregulated programming, now seems to offer a simpler solution, by putting the power to block undesirable programming in the hands of viewers.

In addition, no code applies to video-on-demand programming undertakings, licensed for the first time in July 1997. Video-on-demand services are offered on a "pick-and-pay" basis, whereby the viewer individually selects and pays for each program, effectively acting as his or her own programmer; hence, a code may not be necessary. Without a code to govern video-on-demand licensees, however, they are free to include any kind of violent content in their libraries of titles. Parents, in this case, might need to monitor their children’s viewing selections.

For those segments of the industry using television violence codes, the codes are not without their critics. Some civil libertarians suggest the codes are replete with internal contradictions and their effective administration would require the wisdom of Solomon. Some script writers and others involved in the imaginative end of productions maintain that the codes impinge upon freedom of expression and will stifle creativity.

Criticisms aside, the CRTC’s attempts at co-operative regulation of television violence using industry-designed codes and classification systems may present certain advantages over regulation by government-designed statutory instruments. The codes offer general guidelines and establish rules with sufficient elasticity to allow broadcasting licensees to use their expertise, discretion, and common sense in making programming decisions. The classification systems are also versatile in that they permit viewers to decide for themselves what programs are suitable for their TV screens. The flexibility inherent in the use of codes and ratings systems might not be achievable using legislative instruments, such as formal regulations

5. Constitutional Protection of Freedom of Expression

The CRTC’s main strategy in combating television violence has so far been to invite all the players to seek a co-operative solution. For example, it has brought together members of the industry, parents’ groups, and other interested parties to develop and introduce measures to protect children from the harmful effects of television violence. In addition, it has prompted the industry to become better at regulating itself, for example by developing sectoral codes to govern displays of violence on television. The Commission approves each code, when it is satisfied with its contents, and then makes its application a condition of licence for the broadcasting undertakings concerned.

Some legal commentators, such as Paul Horwitz, argue that the Commission’s regulatory approach, though characterized as voluntary self-regulation, constitutes coercive government action and that the codes infringe the Charter’s guarantee of freedom of expression. Even if the current codes do not constitute sufficient government action to invoke the protection of the Charter, the Commission could take a more hands-on approach in the future by issuing actual regulations (as was acknowledged in its April 1995 Notice of Public Hearing CRTC 1995-5) or the government could choose to intervene by introducing legislation to control violence on television. Any of these activities would clearly constitute government action and the Charter would definitely come into play.

Section 2(b) of the Charter guarantees everyone "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication." Parliament and the government of Canada, including its regulatory agencies, cannot violate this freedom, unless that infringement is shown to be a reasonable limit, prescribed by law, which can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society -- in other words, unless it is saved by section 1 of the Charter.

The Supreme Court of Canada has decided that all forms of expression are protected under section 2(b), with the possible exception of expression in the form of actual, physical violence. Thus, expression in the form of film, video or television programs would be protected by the Charter. In addition, all nature of expression is protected, even invidious types such as hate propaganda and hard-core pornography. Section 2(b) of the Charter is content-blind.

Given the courts’ interpretation of section 2(b) of the Charter, regulatory action by the CRTC or legislative action by Parliament taken to control the violence appearing on television would clearly contravene the guarantee of freedom of expression. Thus, the courts could allow the violation of this right to stand only if they could be persuaded by the government that the violation could be justified under section 1 of the Charter. The task of persuading the courts is not one to be taken lightly. As the Supreme Court of Canada pointed out in RJR-MacDonald v. Canada (the 1995 decision in which it ruled that the federal government’s law banning tobacco advertising was unconstitutional), the process of justifying a breach of the Charter’s protection of free expression involves producing concrete evidence. Logic, intuition, or deference to Cabinet’s secret deliberations will not be enough to satisfy the burden of proof resting with the government in such cases.

Some questions that the courts would consider in determining whether a contravening law or regulation was salvageable would include the following: What was the government’s objective in creating it? Were the means chosen to accomplish that objective reasonable and fair? Is there compelling evidence of a rational connection between the objective contemplated and the means used? Is the law or regulation sufficiently clear? What is its negative impact?

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Parliamentary Action

 The Broadcasting Act and the Criminal Code are the main federal statutes that provide the actual or potential means to regulate or prohibit depictions of violence on television. Apart from this legislation, other key government responses to violence on television, such as committee reports and policy statements, are summarized in the Chronology, which follows this section.

A. Broadcasting Act

 In section 3 of the Broadcasting Act (S.C. 1991, c.11), Parliament established a broadcasting policy for Canada which sets goals for the Canadian broadcasting system. These goals include the following: that the Canadian broadcasting system should serve to safeguard, enrich and strengthen the social fabric of Canada; that the programming originated by broadcasting undertakings should meet a high standard; and that all broadcasting licensees should be responsible for the programs they broadcast. Section 5 requires the Commission to regulate and supervise all aspects of the Canadian broadcasting system and to implement the broadcasting policy established under the Act. Section 10 authorizes the CRTC to make regulations, including those respecting standards of programs and the allocation of broadcasting time for the purpose of giving effect to the broadcasting policy set out in section 3 of the Act. These provisions taken together provide the CRTC with the power and authority to regulate and supervise violent television programming.

On the other hand, the Commission’s regulatory powers are not limitless. The Federal Court, Trial Division has ruled that the Act does not permit the CRTC to censor the contents of individual programs (National Indian Brotherhood v. Juneau (No.3), [1971] F.C. 498 at 516). Also, as a government agency, the CRTC is required, in performing its functions, to respect the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protects, among other rights, freedom of expression.

B. Criminal Code

The Criminal Code’s obscenity provision (R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46, s. 163) outlaws, among other things, making, distributing, selling, publicly exposing, and possessing materials, including films and videos that are "obscene." For materials to be considered "obscene," they must involve sex -- more specifically, "the undue exploitation of sex, or of sex and any one or more of the following subjects, namely, crime, horror, cruelty and violence." Violence alone -- i.e., when not depicted in conjunction with sex -- no matter how devoid of socially or culturally redeeming value, is not "obscene" under the law and is not prohibited. Recommendations to change the criminal law to introduce sanctions related to material depicting undue violence alone have been put forward by a number of federal committees over the years, including the Special Committee on Pornography and Prostitution (1985) and the House of Commons Standing Committees on Communications and Culture (1993) and on Justice and Legal Affairs (1994). As well, actual legislative reform was attempted through Bill C-19, an omnibus bill tabled in February 1984 that would have amended the Criminal Code, but which died on the Order Paper. That bill would have removed the necessary linkage between violence and sex in the Code’s obscenity provision and would have added, to the definition of what is obscene, the undue exploitation of violence in degrading representations.

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Chronology
 
June 1952 - In the United States, the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Subcommittee held the first congressional hearing on violence in radio and television and its impact on children and youth.

31 December 1971 - The Report of the U.S. Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behaviour was released. It concluded that a modest relationship existed between the viewing of television violence and aggressive behaviour in some children.

1977 - The Ontario Royal Commission on Violence in the Communications Industry released a report which found a connection between violence in the media and the incidence of violent crimes in society. 

16 October 1980 - The Standing Senate Committee on Health, Welfare and Science, which studied early childhood experiences as causes of criminal behaviour, recommended that the CRTC and CBC take step to ensure a high standard in children’s programming.

1982 - The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health released a report updating the 1972 Surgeon General’s report on television and behaviour. It found a consensus among most of the research community that a link exists between TV violence and aggression.

February 1985 - The Special Committee on Pornography and Prostitution recommended that the federal government treat violent material, under the Criminal Code, in a similar manner to obscene sexual material and that the provinces establish a system to review and classify videotapes. 

May 1992 - The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) released two violence studies (Scientific Knowledge about Television Violence and Summary and Analysis of Various Studies on Violence and Television) which it had initiated following the shooting of 14 women at Montreal’s Institut Polytechnique on 6 December 1989. 

February 1985 - The Special Committee on Pornography and Prostitution recommended that the federal government treat violent material, under the Criminal Code, in a similar manner to obscene sexual material and that the provinces establish a system to review and classify videotapes. 

May 1992 - The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) released two violence studies (Scientific Knowledge about Television Violence and Summary and Analysis of Various Studies on Violence and Television) which it had initiated following the shooting of 14 women at Montreal’s Institut Polytechnique on 6 December 1989. 

18 November 1992 - Fourteen-year-old Virginie Larivière of Montreal presented the Government with a petition signed by more than 1.2 million Canadians, demanding legislation against violence on television. By early 1993, the total number of signatures collected exceeded 1.3 million. 

31 January 1993 - A patent for an apparatus, the "V-chip," to screen out violent programming on television was granted to its B.C. inventor, Tim Collings. 

19-20 February 1993 - The C.M. Hincks Institute, with support from the CRTC, hosted a colloquium on TV violence in Toronto, out of which was born the Action Group on Violence on Television. One of the Group’s main goals was to help develop a classification system for TV programs.

19 February 1993 - The federal Minister of Communications, Perrin Beatty, announced a five-part strategy to deal with violence on television which involved an industry-wide code of ethics, public education, advertisers’ co-operation, international collaboration and awards for those who make a difference. 

2 June 1993 - The House of Commons Standing Committee on Communications and Culture released its report Television Violence: Fraying Our Social Fabric, which concluded that the problem should be addressed by all stakeholders, including parents, government, and the industry, where possible on a voluntary basis and with minimal legislative intervention. 

7 June 1993 - A Gallup poll showed that 72% of Canadians would favour a law limiting violence on television. 

1 January 1994 - The Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ code to regulate violence on television, which had been approved by the CRTC in October 1993, came into force. 

16 November 1994 - The House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs tabled its Report on Crime Cards and Board Games recommending that the obscenity provisions of the Criminal Code be expanded to prohibit the importation, distribution or sale of goods or materials whose dominant characteristic is the undue exploitation or glorification of horror, cruelty or violence. 

21 December 1994 - The CRTC approved a code to regulate violence on television developed by the providers of Canadian pay-TV and pay-per-view services. 

8 February 1996 - The U.S. Telecommunications Act of 1996 came into effect, giving the industry one year to establish a voluntary rating system for television programming and requiring television manufacturers to install a V-chip type system in new sets. 

14 March 1996 - The CRTC announced its policy on violence in television programming and set a deadline of September 1996 for making V-chip technology and a V-chip-based program classification system available for public use in Canada.

April 1996 - The Minister of Justice released "Undue Exploitation of Violence," a consultation paper aimed at gathering views on gratuitous and excessive portrayals of violence, to help the Minister discern, among other things, whether additional legislative or non-legislative measures are needed to deal with such portrayals. 

4 October 1996 - The CRTC extended the deadline to the start of the fall 1997 programming season for the roll out of V-chip technology and the introduction of a related program classification system.

18 June 1997 - The CRTC approved a new classification system for violence in television programming proposed by the Action Group on Violence on Television (AGVOT). Commitments were made to make V-chip technology available to Canadian consumers as soon as feasible and to introduce on-screen displays of program-rating icons as an interim measure.

28 August 1997 - AGVOT unveiled the graphic icons to be used by English-language broadcasters and specialty services, beginning in September 1997, to identify the ratings assigned to their programs. 

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Selected References
 

Atkinson, Dave and Florian Sauvageau. Summary and Analysis of Various Studies on Violence and Television. Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, Ottawa, May 1992.

Freedman, Jonathan L. "Television Violence and Aggression: What Psychologists Should Tell the Public." Psychology and Social Policy. Peter Suedfeld and Philip Tetlock, editors. Hemisphere Publishing Corp., New York, 1992.

Horwitz, Paul. "Regulating TV Violence: An Analysis of the Voluntary Code Regarding Violence in Television Programming." University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review, Vol. 52, Spring 1994.

House of Commons Standing Committee on Communications and Culture. Third Report - Television Violence: Fraying Our Social Fabric. 3rd Session, 34th Parliament, June 1993.

Huston, Aletha C. et al. Big World, Small Screen. University of Nebraska Press, Nebraska, 1992.

Josephson, Wendy L. Television Violence: A Review of the Effects on Children of Different Ages. Canadian Heritage, Ottawa, February 1995.

National Institute of Mental Health. Television and Behaviour - Ten Years of Scientific Progress and Implications for the Eighties. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and National Institute of Mental Health, Washington, 1982.

Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behaviour. Television and Growing Up: The Impact of Televised Violence - Report to the Surgeon General United States Public Health Service. U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Washington, 1971.

Credits

Source

U.S. Department Of Education

Contents

How Can Excessive Television Viewing Affect Children's Learning And School Performance?

TV Affects Social And Emotional Behaviour

TV Affects Creativity And Language Skills

TV Affects School Achievement

How Can Parents Guide Their Children's Television Viewing?

Where Can Parents And Teachers Find Out More About Television Viewing And Children?

Sources

Children in the United States watch an average of 3 to 5 hours of television every day. Parents and teachers are concerned about the possible effects of excessive television viewing on children.

There is reason for such concern. Studies show that extensive television viewing may be associated with violent or overly aggressive behaviour, poor academic performance, precocious sexuality, obesity, and the use of drugs or alcohol.

How Can Excessive Television Viewing Affect Children's Learning And School Performance?

Research on the effects of television viewing on children reveals a number of possible problems.

TV Affects Social And Emotional Behaviour

Studies on television viewing reveal that the amount of violence on television is increasing. Viewing violent programs can make children afraid, worried, or suspicious and may increase tendencies toward aggressive behaviour. Parents should keep in mind that television often portrays sexual behaviour and the use of alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs in inviting terms.

TV Affects Creativity And Language Skills

Children who spend a great deal of time watching television have less time for playing, reading, doing homework, and talking with other children and adults. Language skills are best fostered through reading and active two-way participation in conversations and play activities. Excessive TV watching can interfere with growth in these areas.

TV Affects School Achievement

Research has found that the amount of time a child spends on homework is significantly related to how well he or she does in school. Since television viewing can interfere with the completion of homework assignments and reduce the amount of sleep a child gets, excessive viewing could affect your child's grades and alertness in school.

How Can Parents Guide Their Children's Television Viewing?

Television viewing can have positive effects, if parents and teachers:

• Set Limits. Know how many hours of television your children watch. Limit your children's viewing to 1 to 2 hours a day. Watching television is often more habit than choice. Establish good viewing habits for your children. Suggest and participate with your children in alternative activities such as reading, sports, conversation, games, and hobbies. Because children model their behaviour after their parents, consider your own viewing habits and set a good example. Eliminate some television viewing by setting a few basic rules, such as no television during meals or before completing household tasks or homework.
• Plan. Encourage your children to plan their viewing by using a TV Guide or newspaper listing rather than flipping channels. Help the children decide which show to see and encourage them to watch a variety of programs appropriate for their level of understanding. The television should be turned on only for specific programs; it should be turned off when they are over.
• Participate. Know what your children watch on television. Watch with them and talk about the programs afterward. Explain situations that are confusing. Ask why any violent scenes occurred and how painful they were. Ask your children for ideas about ways the conflict could have been resolved without violence.
• Monitor. Encourage children to watch programs about characters who co-operate and care for each other. Such programs can influence children in positive ways by modelling desirable behaviour and setting good examples.
• Analyse Commercials. Children need your help to critically evaluate the validity of the many products advertised on television. Teach children to analyse commercials and recognise exaggerated claims. Point out that the makers of the products pay for advertising.
• Express Your Views. Call your local television station when you are offended or pleased by something on television. Stations, networks, and sponsors are all concerned about the effects of television viewing on children and are responsive to parents' concerns.

Where Can Parents And Teachers Find Out More About Television Viewing And Children?

Action for Children's Television (ACT)
20 University Road
Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 876-6620

American Academy of Paediatrics
141 Northwest Point Boulevard
P.O. Box 927
Elk Grove Village, IL 60007
(312) 228-5005

Centre for Early Education and Development (CEED)
University of Minnesota
51 East River Road
Minneapolis, MN 55455
(612) 624-3567

ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education
University of Illinois
College of Education
805 West Pennsylvania Avenue
Urbana, IL 61801-4897
(217) 333-1386

Sources

Most of the following references--those identified with an ED or EJ number--have been abstracted and are in the ERIC database. The journal articles should be available at most research libraries. For a list of ERIC collections in your area, contact ACCESS ERIC at 1 (800) LET-ERIC.

Cecil, N. L. (1988). "Help Children Become More Critical TV Watchers." PTA TODAY, 13 (April), 12-14. EJ 372 807.

Corporation for Public Broadcasting (1988). TV Tips For Parents: Using Television To Help Your Child Learn. Washington, DC. ED 299 948.

"Guidelines for Family Television Viewing" (1990). ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education, Urbana, IL. ED 320 662.

Credits

Written by Mima Spencer, ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education.

This publication was prepared by ACCESS ERIC with funding from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, under Contract No. RI890120. The opinions expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of the Department of Education.

The behaviour Durant and his team were looking for was increased amount of drinking, drug use and fighting, both verbally and physically, with their dates.

"Is it causing these behaviours or is it that those adolescents were more prone to engage in health risk behaviours and in other violent behaviours more likely to watch wrestling," Durant said. "I would think that a little of both is occurring."

The researchers found that among high school students, the frequency that they had watched wrestling in the previous two weeks was associated with the frequency that they had engaged in tobacco, alcohol and other substance use, as well as the frequency that they engaged in behaviours like fighting and carrying weapons.

Durant also said that he was surprised to see that teenage girls who watched wrestling were also more likely to fight with their dates as well.

"We have to advise parents to monitor what their children are watching and be careful about the amount of violence and substance abuse they allow their children to watch on television," he said.

ABC Radio contributed to this report

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