In today's society, one of the biggest influences in an American's life is the television. Considering that most Americans have an average of 2.5 television sets in their homes and watch an average of three to four hours of programming a day, the television has made its way into our everyday life. With television being such a huge portion of the American life, it is becoming an even bigger portion of our children's lives. With American adults having less and less time due to work, careers and the amount of activities they assume, American children are watching more and more television.
Being part of the Television Department and having the power of a potential media maker, I have always believed that the television is an important tool in one's life, but it all depends on what is being watched. I believe that as the times are changing, television is also changing. It is producing shows with less morals and values and the viewers are just becoming more immune to what is being shown. But with our children seeing the television more than we did as we were growing up, it is more important now than ever to see how our children are reacting to what is being shown to them on the television.
In doing research on the influence of television in the lives of our children, I found two articles that have to deal with the violence on television and the reaction that children had.
Recently, in the "Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry," there was an article written that discussed several studies that have taken place in America having to deal with the violent content of television and children watching it. It states, "Children in the United States view about 2.5 hours of television per day by the time they enter elementary school, increase their viewing to almost 4 hours per day by early adolescence and average somewhere between 3 and 4 hours during their teenage years The average American child have witnessed 8,000 murders and more than 100,000 other acts of violence by the time they had graduated from elementary school.
