Influence of Television Violence on the Behaviour of Children (A Study on Awka Metropolis, Anambra State)
COMPLETE MATERIAL COST N5000
WE HAVE SECURITY IN OUR BUSINESS.
MONEY BACK GUARANTEE
Abstract
This study is conceived to investigate the influence of television violence on children; a focus on Awka metropolis, Anambra state. The aim is to know the extent to which violence on television influences aggressive behavior in children and sort to enlighten parents on the need to monitor the content of programmes their children watch or tune to. The survey research method was employed in carrying out this work. The researcher drew up questionnaire items and prepared interview questions with which she went to the field. With those measuring instruments for data collection, the researcher was able to come back with satisfactory data that revealed that programmes on television and other related medium do have strong negative influence on children more than the positive. Television also makes the children see the world as a mean dangerous place to be. The researcher recommends that parents should watch and evaluate programmes before allowing their children to watch them. The researcher concludes that television affects both adults and children in subtle ways and that television violence was identified as an effective tool in stimulating learning with a strong impact for change.
Chapter One
Introduction
- Background of the Study
Television has been regarded as the most effective spontaneous electronic message carrier of our time since its inception.
It was the early motion pictures that first inspired questions on the impact of the entertainment media on society. They debate on whether media portrayal of violence and newspapers pages are tools for influencing violence. According to Encyclopedia Britannia, the word “Television” was derived from a Greek world “Viedre” meaning “to see”, television has the power to bring into focus pictures and sounds of events form around the world to millions of homes. Concern about television violence on television began in the earliest days of the medium in the late 1940’s and its explosive growth in the 50’s families with children were among the first to acquire television sets and children tended to watch a lot of television programmes like cartoons and comedies which contains violent scenes.
According to Oladapo (1992), television is the most powerful means in which most children get influenced by what they watch on it. Most children try to imitate what they see on television, violence is shown on television everyday and this violence should therefore be minimized. In Nigeria, most children witness lots of television violence without control or being controlled. Television violence on Nigeria television station can come also in form of foreign action movies, local television programmes etc. Television violence exposes children to violence in real life; therefore it is usually condemned as bad influence in the society.
Parents become worried that their children would imitate and adopt some of the violent programmes they watch, besides cartoons and adult programmes. Children were watching more violence films than their parents had experienced in their youths.
However, broadcast become sensitive to the issue when in 1951 the first television code was enacted in America which had a paragraph or violence in the section of children programmes. It asserted that “television programmes were glorifying violence and had long been encouraging aggressive behaviour on children. The general viewing pattern is one of the steady rises in the number of hours viewed from early childhood through preadolescence and then a sharp drop in viewing during adolescent years. The nature of violent scenes differed (ie. contextual differences could vary) and as such, the content viewed is considered more important than the number of viewing.
Television violence that is glamorized, sanitized and trivialized, teaches that violence is a solution to problems as a result of this, children now tend to be violent, aggressive and disrespectful to any body. However, the concern about violence as well as the way men and women are portrayed, and also how ethic minorities are portrayed and various concerns about advertising and other content issue have continued to this day but our major concern here is television violence and its influence.