Does watching violent children's TV promote violence in children?
By kbkbooks
@kbkbooks (7022)
Canada
March 30, 2007 7:34pm CST
I grew up watching Wiley Coyote fall to many destructions and get blown up hundreds of times. He always came out fine. I watched the three stooges slap and kick and poke each other silly. I never liked to watch soldiers and shooting and war of any kind.
I didn't let my kids watch Ninja Turtles or anything else I felt was needlessly violent. I watched other kids fighting and imitating these characters but my kids never did. They weren't sissies by any stretch of the imagination, they could always stick up for themselves when needed but they never got into any real fights.
I don't know if TV really promotes violent behavior in kids or not. Doesn't it have a lot to do with how the parents handle it, just as it does with watching intimate behavior between people? Kids are going to know the difference between reality and TV if it is discussed intelligently on their level. How a child processes information depends totally on how they are taught to handle it.
4 responses
@lordwarwizard (35747)
• Singapore
31 Mar 07
I think it does, some way. Children are very impressible and might be easily convinced of things that are not true. As adults, it comes easier to us what things should be done or should not be done. But for children, they might pick up the wrong things from TV programs.
That's why it is important for a guardian to watch the TV programs with them so that they can point out to the children if there are things that are wrongly expressed.
@pisces24 (147)
• Philippines
31 Mar 07
i don't think it does. my kids grew up watching cartoons too, and they 're not violent. i think it's in our genes if we have the tendency to be violent, and how our parents brought us up. i grew up in a gambling neighborhood, but i don't gamble.
kids should be made aware that these shows are just cartoons and those things don't happen in real life... come to think of it, today's kids are smart and i believe they know that it's just that -- cartoons. :)
1 person likes this
@kbkbooks (7022)
• Canada
31 Mar 07
I think you are right. I also think we have more of our fantasy characters in cartoon form than the old days when Superman, the Three Stooges and the Little Rascals were all in what we now call "live action". I think it must be less likely that kids will imitate behavior that is obviously animated and pretend than like when some children tried to swallow coins to give themselves bodies of steel or when they tried to fly like the "real" superheros.
@whiteheather39 (24403)
• United States
31 Mar 07
I don't know if it promotes it but I sure don't think it helps them to realize that violence is never the answer to a problem.
1 person likes this
@SilentRose19 (1733)
• United States
31 Mar 07
Children are definately impresionable, they see things and copy them (or try to). Its up to the parents to teach them that its not right for you to do things that a cartoon does, its good for children to know these things. However its usually already in the children to be violent, weather its in the genetics or if they've just been brought up around that kind of enviornment. Some kids just flake it off like its nothing, some actually will think its ok. Thats what I mean is they were brought up around it, it they weren't taught that it was bad then what are they supposed to think. Simple, discipline your children for what they do wrong. Don't try to stop them from messing up first.
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