INFLUENCE OF TV ON CHILD DEVELOPMENT

Television became a technical reality in the United States during the late 1930's. In January of 1948, there were over 100,000 television sets in use and ten years later, four out of five American homes had them. By 1969, the television set had become an integral part of American households, with 95 percent having at least one television set (Lange, Baker, & Ball, 1969). Almost from the beginning, there has been a concern on the part of educators, parents and other professionals, about child development and the effects that television has on children. The recent television landscape continues to be full of drugs, crime, violence, sex role and other stereotypes, as well as an explicit view of sexual matters. This paper deals with violence on TV and its effect on children's emotions and behavior, sex roles and stereotypes, how children model behavior they have seen on TV, and how their consumption demands are affected by advertising. Using studies and recent news reports it will look at the changing view of these concerns and will cite actual items noted in the media.

Since the earliest days of television, violence has played a prominent role in television on Westerns, police shows, and war dramas, not to mention cartoons and children's programming. As a result, Congressional studies on the subject were carried out beginning in 1954. Of the five volume Surgeon General's Report on Television and Social Behavior published in 1972,

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gures, the number of juveniles arrested for serious and violent crimes increased 1600 percent between the years 1952 and 1972. Since this is the same period during which television reached its peak, and since many of the programs children watch are those containing large doses of violence, it seems reasonable that there would be a link between the two factors. This connection, however, continues to elude social scientists and researchers. Television programming is full of stereotypes. They occur on several levels: those having to do with sex, age, and race. Men have outnumbered women; there are three times as many men on television even though women are more than 50 percent of the total U.S. population. Although women in the last decade have attained a larger number of major roles, the disparity between male and female roles has not changed. The characteristics of women who appear on television are not typical of the same attributes in the population at large. Women on television tend to be younger and more home-bound, with only one-third holding outside jobs. In terms of those who do work outside the home, women are underrepresented in higher status professions such as business, medicine and law. As a matter of fact, t
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Approximate Word count = 2443
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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