Can television violence influence behavior?

"Could the home actually be more responsible for children's violent behavior than television?" Mike Males, author of Stop blaming kids and TV poses this and many other questions. American agencies spend more time and resources on censoring advertising and television than focusing on the real issues in this country that cause violence, the American homes.

"In 1998 the center of disease control lamented that 75% of all teenage smokers come from homes where parents smoke". When questioned about this statistic Kathy Mulvey of Infact stated that "Why make enemies of fifty million adult smokers". This percentage is an overwhelming number, if these agencies would confront this issue it could possibly have positive outcome with teenagers to help with the anti-smoking efforts.

Violence does not souly stem from television and advertising campaigns but from the home as well. "Americas biggest explosion in felony violent crime is not street crime among minorities or teens of any color, but domestic violence among aging, mostly white baby boomers. Is the answer to this problem to censor violent and sexually explicit programming from white middle aged men and women?

Americans need to become proactive with there children, begin monitoring what there watching and discuss what is going on. The real issue is that as a society we want the easy fix. Technology entertains and "babysits" our children so we do not have to deal with it. If parents would limit the amount of time and television shows that there children watch then maybe there would be less violence among children. As the saying goes "Monkey see, Monkey do", parents can not expect these agencies to set an example for our children when we are not even setting the example. Chain smoking a pack of ciggarettes a day in front of a child and telling them not to smoke is not going to stop them from smoking it will increase the probability of them starting to smoke.

Society as a whole must address these issues if we want to see change, we must be willing to make the changes first before we expect our kids to. Talk to them and ask what is going on with them, explain different ways to deal with frustration and tell them what is really going on in the world.

Mike Males, Stop Blaming Kids and TV
What Matters in America, Gary Goshgarian
Pearson Education 2007