The Effects of Violence in Children Cartoons :: Psychology

Television is everywhere these days, not just in our living rooms but in bathrooms, kitchens, doctors offices, grocery stores, airplanes, and classrooms. We take for access to TV virtually anywhere and as Americans we are taking advantaged of it. Adults arent the only ones watching TV children today are watching more TV than ever before. TV has hitherto become known as Americas baby-sitter. (Krieg). Meaning that parents are now using the television as a way of socialise their children while they attempt to accomplish other things such as cooking and cleaning. Most Americans would agree that children watch a lot of TV. Its everyday to see a child sitting in front of the TV on a Saturday morning with their Coco Pebbles watching their favorite superhero. This sounds harmless enough. However, many parents and teachers across the orbit are worried about the cartoons their children are watching. They feel that the cartoons adjudge become too violent and are having negative l ong-term effects on children. It is common to see young boys pretending to shoot one another, while jumping on the couch and hiding in closets as a sort of realize fort. But parents say that children are learning these behaviors from cartoons and imitating them. Others however, disagree, they say that violence in cartoons does not effect children and that children need this world of fantasy in their lives. They say that children would fate these same behaviors regardless of the content of the cartoons they watch. On average and American child will watch 32 acts of violence per hour on TV. This number has skyrocketed from 20 years ago when it was just 12 acts per hour (Krieg). This being said a child will have watched anywhere from 8,000 to 100,000 acts of violence before they even finish elementary school (Weiss). While adults can watch violence on TV and understand that it is not real, children on the other hand have difficulty differentiating the between what is real and what i s make believe. Those arguing that childrens cartoons are too violent say that these cartoons will greatly affect these childrens behaviors growing up. Violence is a learned behavior and therefore children need to see violence in order to become violence themselves (Krieg). If a child is viewing their favorite character reference hitting, kicking, and beating up the bad guys a child will learn these behaviors too.