Essay About Average Child And Television Programs

Reflection or Fabrication?
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Reflection or Fabrication?”
Since the beginning of civilized society, man has been infatuated with entertainment.
From the ancient Grecian Plays and bloody Roman gladiators to Hollywood productions and
Broadway musicals, people have always loved to be entertained. The forms of entertainment have
changed, but not the effects that they have on the spectators. Movies, Television, Musicals, and
even Music itself, all have a profound effect on the people who loose themselves in the magical
(and sometimes hypnotic) charm of the entertainment. It is a way to escape the everyday hustle
and bustle of the sometimes chaotic “real world” and just get lost in the story. Here in lies the
problem. It seems as if society has forgotten about the story and has started to believe its own lies.
Sex and violence are more popular on television than educational programing. Violence also
occurs fifty-five times more often on television than it does in the real world (Medved). Is this a
reflection of our society, or is it merely a fabrication; a distorted view of our reality that has been
created by our own “storytellers”? Violence in entertainment has become a major factor in the
increase of violence in todays society, and something must be done about it.
Violence is defined as the use of ones powers to physically or mentally inflict injury on
another. It is spread throughout the world by many different medians. The main ones being:
television, cinema, video games, and music. All of these have useful and very beneficial qualities.
The potential for educational and informative programing is phenomenal, yet we still choose to
poison our minds with useless information and meaningless trash. Television programs have
turned from entertainment and are now filled with worthless melodramas that supposedly
“entertain”. Instead, now all they do is annoy. The cinema used to attract one and all, now many
wouldnt waste their time, let alone their money, to go and see a mindless work of “art”. Violence
has corrupted the entertainment industry like a virus infects a computers hard drive. The only
answer to the problem is to remove the virus or scrap the old system and start again, hoping not to
get another infection.
The television, with its far reaching influence, is the main contributor of violence to
society. The programs it presents almost always show human beings as animals. It shows the
audience that humans are not able to be civil, instead they must first resort to a violent behavior
and a reckless attitude with the consequences being left to worry about later. Since the
introductory or the television in the 1950s, the homicide rate has doubled(CDC.gov). The violent
shows also cater to children. A study done by the American Psychological Association concluded
that the average child will have witnessed 8,000 murders and over 100,000 different acts of
violence by the time he or she will have completed the 5th grade. It was also determined that a
child will have spent over 22,000 hours watching television by the time he or she graduates from
highschool. Thats twice as many hours than that child spent in school their entire life.(APA.org)
A child exposed to such violent programs has been proven to be more aggressive than those not
exposed, especially if that child goes un-punished (MSNBC.com).
Another great contributor to the violence obtained by children are video games. Coming a
long way since “Pong” and “Asteroids”, todays games are full of real life scenarios and violent
behavior. Violence that is so realistic, its almost unreal.
On November 9th 2004, stores across America were overflowing with customers who were
waiting in line to buy the newest video game, Halo 2. The game was created and distributed by
the software giant, Microsoft. The company reported a total of 125 million dollars in the first
twenty-four hours of sales, along with more than 500,000 copies of the game sold
(MSNBC.com). The game has a rating of “M”, which stands for Mature Audiences Only. This
rating restricts the purchasing age to 17 and up, yet more than half of the consumers who own the
game are under that age. Children are the most easily influenced people on the planet. Their
young minds are sponges, soaking up information at an alarming rate, yet we keep pumping in the
wrong information for them to obtain. Doug Lowenstein, who is the president of the
Entertainment Software Association stated, “The reality is that most