Rough Draft Topic:Tv and children under 16 Should our children be allowed to watch television? The answer to this question is complicated. There are many reasons that children should and should not watch television. One main reason against children watching television is violence. Children ages twelve to fifteen should be allowed to watch television but in moderate amounts. Violence in media, television programs, and movies is alright, but parents need to moderate what their children watch. If they do not, our children will grow up to be more inclined to take part in violence. The increasing amount of violence on television is creating too much danger for our children. The violence that children see on television is too much for them. Allowing children to watch television without moderation leads to the child developing ideas that this kind of violence is normal in the real world. One journal points out this, “Three to five violent acts are depicted in an average hour of prime-time television and 20 to 25 violent acts are depicted in an average hour of children's television.” (1) This means that television networks put almost five times more violence in children’s programs than in programs for adults. This is a lot of violence for a child to see. Consider that a child watches two to three hours of television a day. That means that they see almost seventy-five acts of violence each day. When a child sees this much violence it becomes natural to them. Children that grow up seeing a lot of violence on television tend to be more violent. Children’s cartoons center on good versus evil most of the time. The good guys must battle it out with the enemy to win the fight. Children learn from television programs no matter what they watch. If they see the good guys furiously fighting off evil all the time, they learn that this is what they should do when bad guys come after them. Teaching children to violently take action toward enemies is a bad idea to teach them. The effects of these types of television programs make our children more prone to act out their frustrations instead of learning of ways to calmly relieve stress. Children that watch the news on television see only the most violent criminal acts and this becomes normal to them. The media and newscasters broadcast the events that are the most likely to capture attention. This turns out to be violence. Newscasters tell about murder, arson, and all the other worst felonies. Children watch this and formulate that our world is full of violence. When in fact our world is not all that violent, it just seems like it is. “When a television news show distorts the truth by altering or manufacturing facts, a television viewer is defenseless even if a re-creation is properly labeled.” (TCR 183) Children are defenseless to altered truths and so they believe that violence is just a normal part of life. Parents need to moderate television viewing and tell their children about the news to make sure they understand that violence is not normal. Movies and television programs have suggested ratings that should be followed so that children are not introduced to the wrong concepts before they can understand them. Ratings are put on movies and programs to help make it easier for parents to moderate what their child watches. But, most parents do not follow these guidelines. Most parents do not even know that they can set codes on their televisions so that only ratings of their choosing can be watched without proper passwords. The lack of moderation by the parents allows children to watch whatever they wish and most of the time, it is violent. Ratings are given to help parents decide what their children should watch and in order to keep our children untainted parents should use these ratings. When a child is exposed to violence through television it becomes normal to him/her so they feel they can act violently. When all a child ever sees is violence on television they learn that that is what they are expected to use in reality to solve problems. Television deceives children and teaches them the wrong ideas. “Suffering from what Rubin called ‘television intoxication,’ he could no longer tell right from wrong.” (TCR 172) This is saying that a person can be intoxicated by the violence on television to a point that they can no longer make correct judgments in life. What a child sees becomes reality to them and this leads them to act violently when in actuality most of life is not violent. Even though television has a lot of violence, there are other reasons to watch it. Education, fun, and fantasy are a few examples of programs on television. Children should be allowed to watch these types of programs because morals can be learned from watching television. Children learn lots of information from television and if we allow them to watch the right programs it will help them to gain the right knowledge. But, since there is violence and other bad programs on television moderation is a must. Violent children arise from all the violence they see. Children watch violent programs and enjoy seeing their heroes, such as Superman and Batman, fight off enemies. Children model themselves after such heroes. They look up to these heroes and want to be just like them. But, these heroes are violent, and because they are violent the children feel that they should act violent to be more like their super heroes. “…those who lack extensive social interaction are more likely to watch television and are more likely to develop parasocial interactions with characters on television.” (2) Since most children watch television they develop interactions with characters and become violent like their character. There are lots of different types of violence that can arise from violence on television. The violence could be fighting between two people, hatred of many classmates, and many others. Television violence shows all these types of violence and gives children ideas. “The argument culture is a pervasive war-like atmosphere that makes us approach public dialogue, and just about anything else we need to accomplish, as if it were a fight.” (TCR 158) This shows that from watching television children get the idea that they need to approach everything as a fight. Children imitate all this violence they see and it just makes our world become more and more like the shows on television. Children ages twelve to fifteen are in the learning stage where they develop most of their ideas and thoughts about life. Parents need to moderate this group of children the most because this is the stage of the child’s life where they learn the most about life. If they learn that violence is normal, an everyday activity, then this is going to be imprinted in their memory and will become their way of life. “White House officials lecture film, music, Internet, fashion, and pop-culture moguls and accuse them of programming kids to smoke, drink, shoot up, have sex, and kill.” (TCR 179) Television programs kids to be violent. Moderation of violence to this age group is most important. Parents have the responsibility to teach their children how to watch television. Parents should explain to their children that everything they see on television is not true. They should sit with their kids and watch their shows with them sometimes and explain to them that what is happening is not real and should not me imitated. Moderation of television as well as sitting and talking to children will help them to formulate the correct ideas about life and keep them from becoming violent and turning what is on television into reality. If parents do their part to moderate what their children watch on television, it will keep kids away from violence while still allowing them to have fun and learn. Children will always see violence on television and if they do not learn what is real and what is just television, they will try to imitate violent acts because they think it is normal. Violent acts are not normal to society and this desperately needs to be taught to children, especially those between the ages of twelve and fifteen because they are in the stage of their lives where they are determining for themselves what reality is. Moderation can help and if we do not want to live in a world where the violence shown on television becomes reality, we need to start setting things straight.