Mass Media and Society - Is Television Harmful for Children?

Mass Media and Society - Is Television Harmful for Children?

A. Current Issue
Television become popular in society, children now have access to more violent images than before. This essay is written to justify whether Television is harmful for children.
Let’s clarified the keyword ‘harmful’ as “something cause physical, mental, or moral impairment or deterioration to someone.”

B.Yes-side
Yes-side argue that television is harmful for children by examining the research in the area of children and television violence[1]. The reasons support their argument are as followed.

Argument: Television is harmful for children
There are both immediate and long term effects of exposure of the media violence to the children. The effects process is highly complex and is influenced by many factors about the viewers, situational cues and contextual characteristics of the violent portrayals.
A.1. Immediate Effect
A.1.1. Increase in aggression resulting from exposure to television violence across all age groups between 3 and 18 and the effects are independent to the school children studied.
R1: Surveys, laboratory and naturalistic experiments from Friedrich-Cofer , Huston, Stein and Friedrich concluded that “Aggression resulting from exposure to television violence across all age groups between 3 and 18”
R2: Meta-analysis of 217 studies from Paik and Comstock concluded that “Regardless of age-whether nursery school, elementary school, college, or adult, effects of television violence is positive.”
R3: More than half of the 67 studies(including 31 laboratory experiments) involving 30,000 participants concluded “A correlation(r) factor of viewing and subsequent aggression is between .31 and .70.”
R4: 230 studies involving 100,000 participants from Hearold concluded that “For all ages and all measures, the majority of studies reported an association between exposure to violence and antisocial behavior.”
A.1.2. Fear effects
R5: Experiments from Tannenbaum and Gaer (1965) concluded that “Happy ending reduced participants’ stress. However, a sad ending increase participants’ stress.”
A.2. Long-term Effect
A.2.1. Television violence is a very likely cause of aggressive behavior, and the effect is long-lasting on children and independent to other social factor.
R6: Longitudinal research from Huesmann, Eron, Guerra, and Crawshaw concluded that “The effect of viewing television violence on aggression is relatively independent of other likely influences and of a magnitude great enough to account for socially important differences.”
R7: Experiments from Eron concluded that “Continued viewing of television violence is a very likely cause of aggressive behavior, and that this is a long-lasting effect on children.”
A.2.2. People exposed to many violent portrayals over a long time will come to be more accepting of violence.
R8: Experiments from Linz, Donneersteub, and Penrod shown that “After five slasher movies is exposed to male participants during a 2-week period, the male participants exhibited decreasing perceptions that the films were violent”.

C.No-Side
No-side argue that television is not harmful for children by proving the researches on children and the television violence are less convincing [2]. The reasons support their argument are as followed.

Argument: Television is not harmful for children
Television violence research flawed and unable to prove a linkage between violent images and harm to children.
A.1.Non-reliable laboratory results
A.1.1.The essential element of the domestic television-viewing experience has been methodically stripped away.
R1:Domestic television viewing is voluntary, private, selective , nonchalant, comfortable, and in the context of competing activities, however, viewing in the laboratory is involuntary, public, choiceless, intense, uncomfortable, and single-minded, and the child is compelled to watch and, material not of the child’s choosing, and probably not of the child’s liking.
R2: Post experiment interviews revealed that all the children had seen the movie before, some as many as 10 times.
A.1.2. Negative to show the desensitization effect generalizes to the real world.
R3: Reviewers of the small desensitization literature conclude there is no empirical evidence that anything like the bystander effect actually exists in real life.
A.2. Problem on the research
A.2.1. Inconsistent measure in Belson’s study
R4: Linking of violence viewing to subsequent aggression was negated by reverse correlations that aggressive youngsters sough out violent content.

D. My Opinion
I agree with the yes-side because yes-side provide a vast data with analysis to support their argument, over 500 researches involving 100 laboratory experiments and 30,000 participants in different age group is considered, the sample is large enough to obtain a accurate result. Moreover, the scope of reasoning in yes-side is large, yes-side consider the influence of situational cues and contextual characteristics of the violent portrayals. Finally, the premise of the yes-side is sufficient enough to prove television is harmful for children. The effect of exposing the violence to children include subsequent viewer aggression, fearful worldview and desensitization, all these will moral deteriorate children, therefore, it can be concluded that Television is harmful for children.
Even though No-side find out the problem on the researches supporting the yes-side, they can only prove that the premise of Yes-side is less convince, it cannot prove that television is not harmful for children (transference of falsity), the reason supporting No-side is weak.
The best way for No-side to support their argument is to hold an experiment to show that there is no significant difference on personal characteristic between the children watching television for a long time and those do the other things, however, the No-side haven’t do so.

E. Conclusion
Television is harmful for children because after examining the research in the area of children and television violence, it can be concluded that there are both immediate and long term effects of exposure of the media violence to the children. The effects include subsequent viewer aggression, fearful worldview and desensitization to violence and the effects is influenced by many factors about the viewers, situational cues and contextual characteristics of the violent portrayals.