The purpose of this paper is to examine violence on television as it relates to children, and to analyze the limitations of research, popular perceptions, theories, monitoring, real world versus fictional TV, behavioral reinforcement and observational learning.
At the end of World War II, most children in the United States had never heard of television. When the medium was first introduced, it was little more than a luxury for the wealthy, but it was a luxury with great appeal, especially for children. Children whose families had a television set quickly became popular. Groups of neighborhood children swarmed to the nearest TV-equipped home to soak up early cartoon and adventure offerings. Given this response, it is not surprising that within two decades (of 1940) virtually every American home had a TV and many had two or more. Despite inflation, the cost of television sets has decreased over the years. While the average cost of a black and white receiver was $279 in 1947, by 1976 the cost had dropped to $89. Today, the overwhelming majority of American households have a color receiver ("What It Does Best," 1989, pp. 102-112).
Television use in the United States quickly stabilized, cutting out its own substantial niche of time in our daily lives. When television entertainment is constantly available through the day, evening and night (as it has been in the United States for many years,) the average household television set is on between five and six hours a day, a figure that has been constant for two decades. Of course, the average person does not watch this much television. Sometimes the set is watched only by the adults or only by the children in the household--occasionally it is on but not being watched by anyone at all.
Still, there is a great deal of actual television viewing. The typical adult watches television between two and three hours per day, perhaps more, if one includes VCR viewing. Most children ...