Essay About Young Children Steve Sensoli And Major Source Of Violence

Television Violence
Essay title: Television Violence
Television violence and the effects it has on young children
Steve Sensoli
What has the world come to these days? It often seems like everywhere you look,
violence rears its ugly head. We see it in the streets, back alleys, school, and even at home.
Out of these three, at home is a major source of violence on a daily basis. Many peoples
living rooms there serve as an outlet for violence that often goes unnoticed. It is the
television, and the children who view it are often pulled into its realistic world of violent
scenes with sometimes devastating results.
Much research has gone into showing why children are so mesmerized by this big
glowing box and the action that takes place on it. Research shows that it is definitely a
major source of violent behavior in children. The research proves time and time again
that aggression and television viewing do go hand in hand. The truth about television
violence and children has been shown. Some people are trying to fight this problem. Others
are ignoring it and hoping it will go away. Still others dont even seem to care. However, the
facts are undeniable. The studies have been carried out and all the results point to one
conclusion: Television violence causes children to be violent and the effects can be life-long.
The information cant be ignored. Violent television viewing does affect children. The
effects have been seen in a number of cases. In New York, a 16-year-old boy broke into a
cellar. When the police caught him and asked him why he was wearing gloves he replied that
he had learned to do so to not leave fingerprints and that he discovered this on television. In
Alabama, a nine-year-old boy received a bad report card from his teacher. He suggested
sending the teacher poisoned candy as revenge as he had seen on television the night
before. In California, a seven-year-old boy sprinkled ground-up glass into the lamb stew
the family was to eat for dinner. These are certainly startling examples of how television can
affect children. It must be pointed out that all of these situations were directly caused by
children watching violent television.
Not only does television violence affect the childs youth, but it can also affect his or
her adulthood. Some psychologists and psychiatrists feel that continued exposure to such
violence might unnaturally speed up the impact of the adult world on the child. This
can force the child into a kind of premature maturity.
Television violence can destroy a young childs mind. The effects of this violence can be
long-lasting, if not never-ending. For some, television at its worst, is an assault on a childs
mind, an dangerous influence that upsets moral balance and makes a child prone to
aggressive behavior as it warps his or her perception of the real world. “Others see television
as an unhealthy intrusion into a childs learning process, substituting easy pictures for the
discipline of reading and concentrating and transforming the young viewer into a hypnotized
nonthinker” (Langone).