Are We Creating Villains? TV Violence & Antisocial Behavior
(Ammara Ghias, Islamabad)
The amount of violence
portrayed on television is staggering. Children who watch television or are even
just exposed to household TV use by other family members are significantly more
likely to exhibit aggressive behavior than children who are not.
Researchers estimate that by the time average child leaving elementary school
have viewed hundreds of murders and thousands of violent acts on T.V. Most of
T.V programs have the highest rates of violent acts and they are on air on time
when children are most likely to be watching. In addition, TV often portrays
violence as good, without consequence, causing no pain or suffering, and even
funny: In short, TV portrayals are very different from real-life violence
According to some, you are what you watch when it comes to exposure to violent
media content and its influence on violent behavior in young people.
Psychological studies have also suggested a link between violent media exposures
and aggressive behavior. One well-known study followed a sample of boys and
girls for 22 years. The researchers aimed to understand the role media plays in
children's psychosocial development. study focused on the likely triggers of
childhood aggression that often lead to problems later in life including
juvenile delinquency, violence, and criminal behavior. For boys, watching TV
violence at age 8 was the best predictor of aggressiveness at age 18, and those
who watched the most TV at age 8 were most likely to engage in violent criminal
behavior by age 30. The evidence is clear that watching violence on television
causes children to behave more aggressively in the short.
Antisocial behaviour is a major problem for society. While television doesn’t
cause all antisocial behaviour, Psychologists do suggest that reducing TV
viewing could go some way towards reducing rates of antisocial behaviour in
society.” The American Academy of Paediatrics recommends no more than one to two
hours of quality television watching per day for kids. The authors say that
while some may consider this connection between TV and antisocial behaviour to
be modest, at a population level it’s nothing to sneeze at, and reducing the
amount of TV our kids watch could have far-reaching effects on their behaviour
as adults.