SMH Home
Home   >   Your Say Tuesday March 11, 2003    

    Have your say

What is your experience of the impact of violent television on children?

This topic is now closed - this is what you said.

Tv is not the problem. But it becomes a substitute for a parent too offen. More Parental time with the child is needed. I see the future pushing the opposite of this though more and more.


It's interesting to note that this research failed to have a control group in it, or at least the news artical didn't mention one. For any of this research and the findings printed to be credible the researches needed to identify 388 Americans who had not been exposed to violent media in thier younger years and do a real comparision. I think you'll find many similarities in behaviour paterns if this could be acheived. I feel that I learned the complete opposite fron these TV shows. Road Runner: you never succeed if you scheme and plot, Six Million Dollar Man and Diry Harry: the law will always catch up with you in the end so it's not worth breaking it. When we were roll playing as kids,didn't we always want to be the good guy?


We sometimes give children too little credit. Children can tell that violence bears disturbing consequences. Television exposes children to violence more to the effect of desensitising the child rather than inspiring violence. The child will merely react with less horror to it.

S. Plissken

This is now the sixth or seventh study that I have read like this one that shows an association bewteen violent TV and violent behaviour.Maybe they are beginning to tell us that we should cut down violence on TV.But Herald, you should of told us more about the study, for the criticsms of the study could be correctPeter B

Peter Bowden

Isn't it equally as plausible that children with violent temperaments would actively seek out violent television? That is, the child's behaviour determines their viewing habits rather than (or perhaps as well as) vice versa.What studies such as this almost always fail to mention is that Japan, despite having some of the most violent childrens' television in the world, also has a remarkably low crime rate: in an average year, there are more murders, assaults and sexual assaults in Los Angeles than in ALL of Japan.Clearly, there is less a correlation than the wowsers would have you believe. These surveys tell us more about the academics' preconceptions than about what actually may be happening.

David Jacobs

Good call Paul Farmer! :) They all came from America, therefore American's incite voilence. Bush could have been a super hero.


It's not just cartoon characters and movies that are influencing our youth, have you ever thought of the effect that music video's have on young minds? Bands such as Tool, Beastie Boys and Fini Scad release such violent clips with their new songs it's no surprise that schools are so violent. I remember when I was at school someone actually stole the batteries out of my Walkman, sold them and then used the money to buy a monaco bar!

Shane Bourelly

What most Media fail to look at, is that modern kids do not understand the consequences of their violence. With previous Australian generations most of us grew up in the bush. We understood guns and what they can do. Anybody who is the least bit rational that has seen the horrible effects of a gunshot wound, even on feral animals (no matter how necessary for farmers) would not want to inflict this on another human being. Today's kids have none of this heritage or understanding and therefore do not know what a gun can do. For this reason alone we need to get people to understand the consequences of their romanticised views of voilence are, in reality a very ugly horrible consequence when seen in the real world.


Do not need to say much. Just have a look at a child's face during a violent seen. TV is one source of learning for children. What are they learning?


It really does come back to the parenting and the environment the child grows up in. I watched a LOT of TV (including classic WB cartoons, Ninja Turtles etc) during a lot of my childhood and am not even remotely violent, because thats not how my family is or how I was taught to be. Kids are much more likely to take cues from their parents, family or friends than the TV.


It is not just parents, or movies, or sporting heroes, or books, or fads which make adults revert to violence.If it should be apparent, it is a combination of all factors, plus the nature of the individual as he (usually a he) grows up.All little boys attempt, at least once, to dominate another, whether it be their parent, their sibling or their fellow in Kindergarten.Given the obvious that there is always a reciprical action the lad either gets a thump on the bum from mum, a stern talking to from his teacher, or a smack in the kisser from his peer.The latter, despite all the hype to the contrary, is usually the best remembered. Every boy remembers his first black eye.It stays, where talks, and soft reprimands, fly quickly away.So it is, that when the boy becomes a man, it is a combination of all the events of his childhood which influences his manliness - he knows, if he has any sense at all, that hitting another, injuring another deliberately, will usually, if not always result in himself being hurt.So he doesn't do it.Thomas More once opined that the reason he obeyed the moral and written law was for no other reason than if he did not, others mightwould do the same, with dire consequences all round.The suggestion, as in this American study (where else?) that stimuli such as a make believe movie would encourage, or demand, that a mature individual would violently ape it and follow suit is patently absurd.


I bet all the poeple in the study wore shoes, therefore shoes cause the violence, or food they all ate food. . . .how about the fact they were all American?

Paul Farmer

Is it just me or do we seem to need something to blame for all the worlds woes. It frightens me to think that people are so content to just palm off their kids problems by blaming whats on TV. Maybe a bit of positive parenting needs to be encouraged.


People seem to misunderstand the problems that violent images can cause to children. Seeing violence does not turn them into violent people. However, what it does do is desensitise them to violence. Children are more comfortable, and less horified, by violent images after witnessing these types of images multiple times. There are many studies showing the link between desensitivity and violent behavior.Parental control and parental example is the best solution.

A. Chandra

To Syd Evans, turn the TV off. The answer is just so simple. ps.I believe these two shows are somewhat of 'shining lights' in an otherwise bland, fluffy, american-laced suburban tv. The amount of rubbish shows on tv should form the real debate. Television could be so much better than it is, yet all we are heaped with is yank trash. Thank god for books.

Kristian O'Toole

I always wished Wile E Coyote would catch the Road Runner,when he did he held up a signWhat do I do now ?

Beep Beep

This is turning into a frightening society. Blood and violence (justified by the 'good' guy fighting the 'bad') has reached unbelievable levels in the mainstream(I was a teacher and know what the kids watch). I dread the future.


To have the temerity to assert such conclusions with a sample population of a little over 300 American Midwesterners smacks of arrogant naivete that is regularly found within university social science departments. This is quack academia, which an average high school student can see through. Just considering all of the readily identifiable variables, the representative sample cannot adequately represent all of the broader permutations of socio-economic, cultural, political, and genetic factors let alone the different combinations of TV Shows!Was there any evidence to suggest that the same audience had a tendency to be more promiscuous if they watched Peyton Place, Dallas Dynasty? Or was there a correlation for them to be overweight as they sat through endless temptations of fatburger and soft scoop commercials between their favourite TV shows?SMH I am saddened you featured this story on your front page this really is tabloid nonsense.

Richard Thomas

Previous Page

Previous forums

New single women

Nasty neighbours


Hospital waiting lists

Sex, food or sleep

Law and order

Madonna plotlines

ISP Filters

Drugs policy

Removing Saddam

Psych testing


Tippling mums-to-be

New job titles

Male vanity

Clark and ATSIC


Protest fallout

Men's health

Election campaign

Bank fees

Peace marches

Valentine's day

Full Your Say archive