VIOLENT PROGRAMS ON TELEVISION LEAD TO AGGRESSIVE...

Since 1982, the National Institute of Mental Health, along with other reputable health organizations has collected data that connects media violence, with violent acts. Conclusions deduced from this data prove that violent programs on television lead to aggressive behavior by children and teenagers who watch those programs. Television violence affects young people of all ages, all socio-economic levels, and all levels of intelligence. Today’s children view vast amounts of violence on television. A steady diet of death, killings, torture, and other grotesque acts may be viewed on any day by vulnerable youth. When children are young, they are impressionable to all their surroundings, and especially vulnerable to what they see. Scientific†¦show more content†¦This association has been easy to support and is substantiated in every major scientific report released in the last twenty years. It has become general knowledge to professional counselors and educators that excessive and unsupervised exposure to television violence increases the use of violence to resolve conflict, while it desensitizes these youth to acts of violence. This exposure to violence in the media makes viewers less critical of real life violence. Since the media often represents violence as â€Å"happy violence† devoid of pain, suffering, and consequences, they are not providing the audience with an accurate or realistic portr ayal of violence. Many studies have also confirmed a cumulative effect of exposure to violence as researchers have traced patterns from childhood exposure to adult social behavior. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence was in charge of investigating these issues and making recommendations to the President. The media’s task force report was titled, â€Å"Violence and the Media.† Conclusions drawn from this report show that real violence was caused in part by the desire of action groups for media attention; and that violence in society could be reduced if the news gave groups the ability to enhance their communication. A particular focus of the study was the