The Effects of Violence in Children Cartoons :: Psychology

Television is everywhere these days, non just in our living rooms but in bathrooms, kitchens, doctors offices, marketplace stores, airplanes, and classrooms. We have access to TV virtually anywhere and as Americans we are taking advantaged of it. Adults arent the only ones watch TV children today are observance more TV than ever before. TV has even bewilder know as Americas baby-sitter. (Krieg). Meaning that parents are now using the television as a way of entertaining their children while they attempt to accomplish a nonher(prenominal) things such as cooking and cleaning. Most Americans would agree that children watch a lot of TV. Its common to deal 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 country are unhinged about the cartoons their children are watching. They feel that the cartoons have become too risky and are h aving negative long-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 constitute fort. But parents affirm that children are learning these appearances 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 show these same behaviors regardless of the content of the cartoons they watch. On average and American child allow for watch 32 acts of violence per minute of arc 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). term adults can watch violence on TV and understand that it is not significant, children on the other hand have difficulty di fferentiating the between what is real and what is 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 hitting, kicking, and lashing up the bad guys a child will learn these behaviors too.