History and Facts
"Parents have to realize that there is a stranger in their house. If you come home and you found a strange man...teaching your kids to punch each other, or trying to sell them all kinds of products, you'd kick him right out of the house. But here you are; you come in and the T.V. is on; and you don't think twice about it."-Dr. Jerome Singer, Yale University (cited in Kalin, 1997).
History
Since the invention of the television in the middle 1900's there has been growing concern about the number of violent programs viewed by individuals in a day, especially children, since they seem to be more impressionable. According to Crowell, Evans, and O'Donnel (1987), public interest and concern about televised violence began to be manifested in the 1950's, and two governmental commissions considered this problem in the late 1960's. The problem of too much television violence began very early. According to the UCLA TV violence monitoring project (2000) shortly after World War II the number of people with televisions in their homes significantly increased, and by 1960 one hundred and fifty million Americans lived in homes with television. With this increase, children viewed television more often,and became more exposed to violent programs. Today, there are few homes without television. For most children television is a part of their everyday life.
The Facts
The average American child or adolescent spends more than 21 hours per week watching television.
The level of prime-time violence is three to five violent acts per hour, and Saturday morning children's programming ranges between 20-25 violent acts per hour.
By age 18, the average young person in America will have seen 200,000 acts of violence on television.
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History & Facts |