ssault than a subtle shift in perceptions caused less by any wilful desire to corrupt than by laziness and the repetition of certain images which undercut traditional values.
One of the issues raised in recent years involves how television serves as an example in teaching gender roles to children. It is not surprising that critics of television cannot agree on the effect of gender role presentation in the media when they cannot agree among themselves on what types of gender roles should be projected in the first place. Some theorists have simply approached the issue with the question as to whether or not television has any effect on gender role at all, and if so, what do current television presentations portray and what effect do these portrayals have.
Television is presumed to have a particular effect on children over and above what it might have on adults. The heaviest viewers of television are children. However, there are numerous unanswered and disturbing questions about what effect long hours of television watching may have on children. The issue of television violence and its effect on children remains a volatile one. Ferris (1981) notes that young children in a survey were asked whether they would give up their toys, their fathers, or their television, and the majority said they would give up their toys and even talking with their fathers before they would give up their television (Ferris, 1981, 141).
Researchers have found that children do not always understand television in the same way adults do. To some children, the screen is a real-world space, and they feel that everything that happens in this same real-world space is related. The medium of television has a symbolic code, and how we understand this code determines the messages we receive and the interpretation we place on those messages. Some of the elements the viewer must decode are visual, and others are auditory. Children take time to learn some o...