are now exposed to television by the time they have had their first birthday and have become purposeful viewers with favorite shows by the time they are three. Viewing time increases and peaks at about two and one-half hours per day just before elementary school. At first, the onset of school seems to diminish available TV time slightly. However, from about age eight viewing increases steadily to an average of almost four hours per day during early adolescence. Viewing then levels off in the later teens at two to three hours a day. This basic pattern has been consistently noted in several studies during the past twenty years or so.
The appearance of television and its meteoric rise in the 1950s had a significant impact on the structuring of family life. Sixty percent of families changed their sleeping patterns because of TV, fifty-five percent altered meal times, and seventy-eight percent used TV as an "electronic babysitter" during the sixties. Engineers in some large metropolitan areas had to redesign city water systems to accommodate the drop in pressure caused by heavy lavatory use during prime time commercials.
Most adults do not seem to feel that television entertainment has an important social influence on them. It is, after all, only entertainment. But children are seen as more susceptible than adults, and concerns about the effects of other media on children's social and personality development were voiced long before the appearance of television on the national scene. In fact, sex and brutal violence were taken out of comic books and movies by the forces of censorship groups, created by those concerned about children's social and moral development (Groller, 1990, p. 34).
Today's children are getting a far heavier dose of television entertainment than their grandparents got out of comic books, movies and phonograph records combined. A certain amount of what children see on television is considered to be "...