Most people in our society generally have the opinion that violence on television

increases aggression in children and adolescents. Does it ? Who is to say whether television has
a positively direct effect or a positive correlation ? However, the majority of the people who
have researched this topic have discovered that violence on television is indeed one of the prime
factors contributing to the increase in violent and aggressive behavior among the youth in society.
That is to say "there has been a growth of strong evidence to suggest that television violence does
play an important and contributory part in the learning of aggression."1 In other words, violence
in the media helps promote and encourage children and adolescents to freely express their
abusive behavior. As a result, the topic of my essay will help support the issue that violence in
the media causes abusive behavior in youths. Furthermore, I will emphasize if their are any
differences in aggressive behavior between the genders.
By nature when babies first begin to learn, they do so by imitating other people's
behaviors. That is to say, "children are born ready to imitate adult behavior"2 because "much of
human behavior is learned by observing another person's behavior and, in some cases, imitating
it."3 One of the first imitation of a newborn baby is the imitation of adults' facial movements.
For example, in the book Infant and Child, by Judith Rich Harris and Robert M. Liebert, "it
shows a baby girl only six days old sticking out her tongue in imitation of her mother's actions."4
This clearly shows that from the moment a child is born, he or she is already learning from
observing. Therefore, as the child grows up and starts watching television, the child can not
distinguish between what is reality and what is fantasy. "In the minds of young children,
television is a source of entirely factual information regarding how the world works."5 For
instance, as a child I could remember imitating violent acts after watching violent movies such as
Superman, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Rocky. It felt fun to imitate these so called heroes because
it seemed like the characters in the movies were invincible. Moreover, the main characters in the
movies were always liked and respected.
There are many other examples that confirm that people imitate violence scenes on
television. For instance, the cartoon Beavis and Butthead on MTV in the United States was
widely criticized for depicting the cartoon characters shaped like cigarettes. The cartoon also
gained national attention when a young five year old fan from the United States set fire to his
house after watching the show. This was due to the fact that in one of the episodes, Beavis and
Butthead were going around setting fires to houses.
Furthermore, in a resent incident in Norway, two children beat another child by jumping and
kicking the child in the head and other parts of her body numerous times. As a result, the child
died from being left out in the cold because she was not able to move due to her injuries. Later
the officials had discovered that the barbaric incident was due to the fact that the children had
watched the violent cartoon Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The children thought that the girl
would later get up because in the show the characters never die. Consequently, the show Mighty
Morphin Power Rangers was canceled throughout Norway. In addition, YTV, a youth cable
channel in Canada and also other television networks has recently canceled the show because it
did not meet their standards.
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 Children are not the only ones who get influenced by violence in the media. Many times
adolescents and young adults also mimic violence portrayed in the media. In another recent
incident in the United States, a young man after seeing the movie Natural Born Killer starring
Woody Harrelson shaved his head to look like the main character and shot his parents. This
definitely proves that children are not the only ones who try to imitate violent behaviors.
Many studies have been conducted to determine if in fact people imitate or model
aggressive behaviors. For example, one of the most well know studies of modeling aggressive
behavior and to determine if children imitate violent acts observed on television is an experiment
done by Albert Bandura, Dorothea Ross and Sheila A. Ross. To test their hypothesis, the
subjects were divided into three experimental groups and one control group. One group observed
real-life aggression, the second group observed the same models but on film and the third group
watched an aggressive cartoon. The groups were also subdivided into male and female subjects
so that half the subjects were exposed to the same sex models, while the other half viewed model
of the opposite sex. After the subjects were exposed to aggression, they were tested for the
amount of imitation and non-imitation aggression. As a result, the boys were significantly more
aggressive than the girls. Gender was also positively correlated with imitative aggression and the
subjects tended to imitate the same sex models more than the opposite sex.
In addition, Bandura, Ross and Ross had predicted that the subjects who saw aggressive
behavior being displayed would consequently be more aggressive when frustrated than the
subjects who were as frustrated but had not been exposed to prior aggression. The experiment
confirmed their prediction. One of the finding of the experiment was that the sex of the child and
the sex of the model provides support that the models influence is somewhat determined by the
gender of the model. Also, the experiment has strong evidence that children who are exposed to
film aggression will have their aggressive behavior increased. The findings also show that
children tend to model their aggression after social behavior particularly that which is seen on
television. Their conclusion can also imply that children who observe aggression in real-life
situations, will tend to be more aggressive than children who live in an aggressive environment.
Another example of modeling aggressive behavior in television is the study as reported in
The Impact of Television (1986) where Tannis Williams and her associates at the University of
British Columbia studied a rural community which was recently introduced to television
compared to two rural communities that already had television and high levels of aggression.
The observation was conducted after the first community had television for two years. The
subjects were forty-five first and second grade students. After the two year period, William and
her associates had concluded that the aggression among children in the first community increased
by 160 percent whereas in the other communities the aggression levels remained the same. One
can infer from this study that television has an impact on children reenacting the violent
behaviors.
Moreover, Brandan S. Centerwall in Television and Violent Crime studies the crime rates
in the United States, Canada and South Africa between the years 1945 to 1974 when South Africa
did not have television whereas both the United States and Canada had television. His results
concluded that the "homicide rate in the United States increased by 93 percent [and] in Canada
the homicide rate increased 92 percent. In South Africa the homicide rate declined by 7
percent."6

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 In fact, in 1982 the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMB) did a study to conclude if
violence on television increases hostile behaviors in people. They also determined that people
will imitate the violent acts seen in the media. In addition, the NIMB reported "that television
violence causes aggression, and that a distorted world presented on television causes heavy
viewers to see the real world as more hostile and scary than it really is."7
What gender is more likely to imitate aggressive behavior? It is generally agreed that
boys are more naturally aggressive than girls. In fact, Bandura, Ross and Ross have concluded
that boys are more likely to imitate violent behavior and their aggression comes forth more when
it is stimulated by outside models. "The tendency for boys to be more aggressive than girls is the
largest and most consistent gender difference in behavior, and is quite clear by the age or 2 or 2
1/2."8 Moreover, the effects of television watching on children's aggressiveness was studied by
Leonard Eron, of the University of Illinois. He concluded that boys were significantly more
aggressive than girls after watching violent shows. Ten years later, he conducted a study on the
same children when they were nineteen years old. This time there was no correlation between
television viewing and aggressive behavior although there was a positive correlation between the
boys television viewing habit at the age of nine and their aggressive behavior and age nineteen.
"Thus, for boys (though not for girls), watching violent TV shows at age 9 appeared to lead to an
increase in aggressiveness at age 19."9
In short, most of the evidence shown throughout the essay concludes that the media indeed
increases violent and aggressive behaviors in people. Therefore, with this available information,
why do parents let their children watch these violent movies and television shows? The
television networks and movie producers should not be the only ones blamed for violent scenes.
The real blame should be directed at the parents. In addition, "limiting children's exposure to
television violence should become part of the public health agenda."10

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