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, four volumes were devoted to studies on the effects of viewing violent television programming. Not surprisingly, most seminars, studies and articles on the effects of television on children have focused on this single issue of violence (Winn, 1977). Some social scientists have found that TV violence may cause aggressive behavior in the normal child. One study is that of Robert Liebert in the 1970's in which he set up laboratory viewing situations where child...