Does television play a role in violent behavior?

earthworm said:

TV is so crappy today due to excessive advertisements and shows dedicated to those with IQ in the two digit range.

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I think you are being generous here, I wonder if most are even target people with more than a single digit IQ.

Even if a show has a higher IQ target, they mess up the facts horrendously. "Criminal Minds" is an excellent example of this, more inaccurate facts per episode than just about anything else I have ever actually watched. (I don't even try to watch military based shows, Liberal writers in LA are pretty much clueless when it comes to the real military.)

I'm not sure that television does, or at least regular network TV. I do tend to suspect that violent video games do.

waas said:

Any time children have violence justified - glorified, rather - in front of them, the likelihood them engaging in violent behavior increases. Simple as that.

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Sometimes, violence does need to be justified, even glorified. Showing children that defending yourself and others or you country with violence because there really are bad violent people out there is always good. However shows that focus on the bad being victorious and indiscriminate violence being acceptable are bad.

I think it does in some aspects. If you let your children watch shows before they are able to comprehend the specific use of violence as a struggle between good and evil. I probably has a bad affect. However, when they are mature enough to understand the difference in when violence is acceptable and when it isn't, it is not generally a bad thing.

Author David Drake had a comment about violence in the forward to one of his books, not an exact quote but,

Violence in media is too clean. It does not accurately reflect the horror and messiness of real violence. Children see someone shot on TV and supposedly killed but then they see the same actor later, in another part and he/she is alive again. For children unable to understand the difference between reality and media, they lose their association between real violence and real death. Movies and television harden people, especially children, to the horrors of real violence.

sharon said:

Small children should not be parked in front of the TV. It inhibits creativity, socialization and education.

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That may be true... but it has nothing to do with the OP

I think the answer to this one, like so many things, is... Yes and No.

It affects some people a little, and some people a lot, and some seemingly not at all. Some people are more impressionable than others; some are more prone to try to live out their fantasy in real life than others. Some shows have more impact than others on the mind. Also it depends on how much of it you watch, and how much you dwell on it, and how realistic your world view is.

Not just violence, and not just sexuality... other things too. Like advertising and consumerism, and also political opinions and social viewpoints. To a large degree, TV has replaced Main Street as where you go to see what other people are doing, wearing, saying and thinking. The problem is that TV is mostly fiction.

Well, over the past decade or so actually the Internet is replacing TV as the new Main Street Anytown USA. That has its own problems, but at least there are real people involved... but often they don't act on the Net like they act IRL.

So it kinda depends on many things. I watched a lot of cowboy movies and war movies and sci-fi growing up, but it didn't cause me to go out and shoot down my worst enemy in High School... because I was also socialized in other ways and taught morals, religion and ethics... and how to count the consequences of my actions in real life.

I had a niece who grew up on a steady diet of slasher flicks and other gore-fest horror from a VERY early age... some of us were VERY worried that it would warp her little mind... well maybe it did, she grew up to be a hippie pacifist.

The effects vary. For some it can be a safe outlet for their feelings, for others it stokes the fires of desire to do things they shouldn't do.

Meh, human beings are violent creatures. There aren't very many critters in the circle of life that aren't. Mother nature is a bit of a bitch that way.

BMC COOLBEANS said:

Exactly what the title says. Feel free to explain your answer.

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I voted and will answer the question just like it wa worded.


"Does television play a role in violent behavior?"

YES

everything one encounters in life plays a role in their behavior