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Effects Of Televison Violence Essay Research Paper (стр. 2 из 2)

2. Perseverance through extensive and elaborate fantasy about the program

3. The capacity to commit the physical act (Josephson, 1995:41).

2.1 What are some solutions that parents can do to prevent children from being affected by violence on television?

There are many various ways a parent can help prevent a child from being affected by television violence. Parents still have more influence that the television in shaping their children s attitude about violence and conflict. Parents should watch with their children a least one episode of the program their children watch and thoroughly discuss what they have just seen and ask a few questions to help clarify what had just happened in the scene. Such as, what do they think is going on? What do they like about what they are watching? What makes them uneasy or scared? And why? (Hough, Erwin, 1999:411).

As the parents are watching with the child or children, they can suggest playing a game of Count the acts of violence and compare the totals at the end of the program. Total the answers and compare the differences between parents and children (Hough, Erwin, 1999:411). The parents could point out why they had these differences and figure a reason how to solve them without using an act of violence.

When a violent incident has just happened, it is best to point out that was no way to solve a problem and violence should never be used to solve any kind of problem. Ask the child if there are any other ways the characters could have solved the problem and reacted. Also ask the child to re-enact the situation without the use of violence (Hough, Erwin. 1999:411).

Dealing with the violent scenes as they appear on the screen is another way to help the child better understand the situation. It is important that it is very clear to the child that people in real life very rarely solve their problems by shooting or killing one another.

Some ideas and questions to introduce the child to help re-establish a sense of reality about violence on television are as follows:

+ How does it feels when someone is getting hurt or killed on television is being watched?

+ If violence is not fun to see, why should it be watched on television?

+ Are there any consequences to the actions shown?

+ Can the child think of other ways to catch the enemies than what they had just seen on television? And it cannot involve hurting other people (Luke, 1988:125).

Parents can outright ban any programs they feel are too offensive and restrict their children s viewing to shows that they feel are more beneficial. Also limiting the amount of time the children spend watching television and encouraging them to spend more time on their hobbies, playing sports, or wit friends (Luke, 1988:125).

If parents can encourage their children to watch programs that demonstrate helping and caring for others and cooperation, these types of programs can help to influence children to become more kind and considerate to the people around them.

3.0 CONCLUSION

Most children of young ages tend to take violent television shows seriously and imitate what they have seen. There are certainly many things that parents can do to influence the effect that television content has on a child. Children whose parents have the motivation and resources to be vigilant and active mediators will likely avoid most of the negative effects of violent content. Unfortunately, not all parents are capable of doing that, and the children who are otherwise most vulnerable to the effects of television violence may be the ones whose parents are least likely to be vigilant mediators in their child s life.

Parents should also try to limit the amount of excessive violence shown on television being viewed and start at a young age. Although watching too much violence on television may be related to teen violence, it starts in the home and what the parents are doing to prevent any form of violence, whether it is teen violence or abuse, from happening.

Televised violence can have numerous effects on the behaviours of children of different age groups. However television violence may not account for all the causes of children s aggression, and it is also true that some children are more likely to be potentially aggressive anyway.

The effect of television violence leads at-risk children to be even more aggressive than they would otherwise be, and although the group at risk might be a minority of viewers, they are more likely to be the majority of aggressors.