Abstract

The main purpose of this research was to explore the bad effects of TV violence on today’s children and the intensity of those effects. Along with discovering the effects of TV violence, it was also intended to provide the statistics related to the topic, such as the time children spend on TV, how often they watch violent programs, etc. Another attempt has been made to reveal the measures that can be taken in order to prevent the children from being affected by the portrayal of violence. Most of the aid was taken from primary research e.g. questionnaires and interviews. Some research papers were also used to take help in the form of secondary research. We’d like to thank every individual that filled the questionnaires for us. And, we’re very grateful to Miss. Afshan Riaz (A-Level Sociology Teacher, Garrison) and Mrs. Seher Naqvi (a parent of 4 kids), for taking out time to answer our interview questions.

Introduction

Two centuries ago, the existence of something to be known as the TV was something totally contrary to reality. People who worked day and night to earn a living, found it almost impossible to even think of something that could become such an entertaining part of their lives. And, those who had a little of concept of the upcoming invention of that time, dreamed about it every now and then, until 1927 when the TV was officially invented by Philo Farnsworth. The marketing of TV started in 1940, and since then TV has continuously been trying to penetrate in the life of every person who can afford to watch it.

TV has been used to convey a lot of information on different aspects, to the viewers. One of the purposes was to make people aware of the violence around the globe. The content producers started to portray violence on TV in the form of Dramas and News in order to make people know about different scenarios of violence and how to do self-defense in such situations. Another reason was to provide them with mental endurance so that they could survive any calamity. And, we also believe that the display of violence is needed a little bit to make people know about the situations that result in violence, how to avoid them, and how to protect themselves in such situations. However, this portrayal of violence is becoming a big concern for us in the form of poor grooming of our children. It is our opinion that the violence on TV is trying to sabotage the mentalities and personalities of today’s children. We believe that it has more bad effects than good effects on the children, and it’s portrayal should be reduced. So, in order to know whether it has bad effects or not, and whether it should be reduced or not, we conducted this research.

It was our intention to make this research as successful as possible. And, we tried our best to do so in these 15 days that we were provided with. The other limits that we faced in our research were that we could only survey 20 people, we could only interview two people, the group could consist of only two people (hence less ideas and help), and we had to complete our research paper within 2500 words.

Literature Review

The topic that we selected for our research is becoming a big concern for almost everyone nowadays, which is one reason people had already done a lot of research on this subject. We read some of those research papers/articles in order to aid ourselves to understand the subject better, and explore the dimensions that were obscure to us. And, reading them really helped us a lot. We went through three research articles which handled three aspects of the subject. One part of their content was the “Sources and Causes of TV violence”, the second part was the “Effects of TV violence on children”, and the last part was about the ways to prevent the children from being affected by that violence displayed on TV.

It was stated that about 40% of the violence shown on TV comes from movies, 25% comes from News, 20% from dramas and 15% comes from Music vidoes. The reason behind showing this violence was mainly to make the audience aware of how and why people commit such violent acts towards each other, and how to survive one of such situations. Another reason was to give a fantasizing look to violence in order to attract more people to watch TV. But now, this portrayal of violence is turning out to be a very fatal threat to the coming generation. This violence is very attractive and children are developing a likelihood for it. Children below 4 years of age are unable to differentiate between facts and fantasies, so they start becoming very comfortable with the violence around them. And, when they grow up, they can’t find things in real life the way they watched them on TV. So, they start creating violence in order to keep themselves satisfied. Another bad effect on the children is that they’ve started to adapt personality traits like immorality and poor behavior. The ways stated to control this bad influence on children were; showing things on TV that can aid in increasing the morality of children, control what your children watch on TV, decrease their TV time, and last but not the least to decreasing the production of such dramas.

(2002, 03). Effects of tv violence on children. StudyMode.com. Retrieved 03, 2014, from http://www.studymode.com/essays/Effects-Of-Tv-Violence-On-Children-38510.html

(2009) The Effects of Television Violence On Children. NovelGuide.com. Retrieved 03,2014, from

https://www.novelguide.com/reportessay/social-issues/political-issues/effects-television-violence-children

(2009) The Impact of Media Violence on Children and Adolescents: Opportunities for Clinical Interventions. Aacap.org. Retrieved 03, 2014, fromhttps://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Medical_Students_and_Residents/Mentorship_Matters/DevelopMentor/The_Impact_of_Media_Violence_on_Children_and_Adolescents_Opportunities_for_Clinical_Interventions.aspx

Data Analysis

Part 1: Raja Abdar Rahman

The first part of the questionnaire that consisted of the first 4 questions was about getting to know about people’s connection to children, and whether they had any knowledge of TV violence and its relation with children.

The first question of the survey questionnaire was: “Do you have children in your family?”20 out of the 20 people who were surveyed answered “Yes” to this question, while none of them answered “No”. This data is displayed on Graph 1 in the Appendix C. Almost every family has children in it especially those in the developing countries, which can be a reason why every one answered “Yes” to this question. However this availability of children aided the people to answer the rest of the questions in an effective manner.

The second question of the questionnaire was: “For how long do the children in your family watch Tv?”13 out of 20 individuals answered “4 hours and above”, 3 answered “3 hours”, 3 answered “2 hours” while 1 answered “1 hour”. This data is shown in Graph 2 in the Appendix C. The average time spent on TV by each child according to the answers to this question is 3 hours and 24 minutes. The result of this question tells us that children spend a lot of their time on watching TV. This makes it very clear that they will be affected by TV whether they watch violence or not, as it is said that the excess of anything has the capability to consume you.

The next question of the research questionnaire was: “Do they often watch channels/programs that portray violence?”17 out of 20 people answered “Yes”, 3 answered “No”. This data is displayed on the Pie Chart 3 in the Appendix C. The answers to this question supported the statement that many children are getting attracted to violence and they like watching it on TV, which is very surprising because no one within the bounds of sanity likes or gets attracted to violence. So, it can be said that the portrayal of violence on TV has made violence attractive and likeable. And, it can be considered as another bad effect of TV violence that children have started to actually like violence.

The fourth question that was asked in the survey was: “Do you think that these programs that display violence are greatly affecting children?”16 out of 20 answered “Yes”, 3 answered “Maybe” and 1 answered “No”. The data is shown in Graph 3 in the Appendix C. The answers to “Question 2” made it very easy for us to conclude that the children were being affected by watching TV. But, we still had to ask people about whether TV violence was affecting children or not? The results to this question told us that almost 80% of the people believed that TV violence does affect children, and it makes sense too. A child who spends most of their 4 hour TV time watching violence will surely be affected by it.