The Enemy of Children: Television Violence.
"With a television in ninety-six percent of Americans" homes, TV obviously has a major effect on the attitudes, education and behavior of our children." (Dudly PG 71) The lesson being sent out through the airwaves is violence. And the students to this lesson are children. The portal to this harmful material is Television. "The context in which most violence is presented on television poses risks for younger viewers" (UCLA monitoring report) Violence on TV is at epidemically high levels for example eighty-five percent of cable programming is violent. (UCLA monitoring report) This on-slot of television violence is affecting children in many harmful ways. As a result of observing this high amount of TV violence, children are now becoming desensitized to violence in real life situations. Therefore children are not able to decide what is appropriate behavior and what is inappropriate behavior. "The media influence undermines children's abilities to select priorities and choose alternatives to violence". (Arnold, pg 21) Children are also known to reenact what they see on television. Example: kids see their favorite super hero do something on television so they want to act like their hero and mimic him. The influence of television violence is a real problem, especially for children. .
Television violence is presented to children on most programming they are exposed to. Statistic such as "the rate of violence in children's programs is three times the rate in prime-time shows" (Benders, pg 32), "fifty-five out of one hundred and eighteen films tested raised concern" (UCLA monitoring report) and an alarming "twenty-three percent of all children's cartoons raised serious concern" (UCLA monitoring report) show there is a definite concern about the amount of violence that can be accessed by children on television. Aggression is the result of all this violence.