Children begin watching television at a very early age, sometimes as early as six months. According to audience rating surveys (Nielsen, 1988), the typical American household has the television set on for more than seven hours each day and children age 2 to 11 spend an average of 28 hours per week viewing (Andreasen, 1990; Condry, 1989; Liebert & Sprafkin, 1988). According to Gerbner's initial analysis (Gerbner, 1972), eight out of every ten plays broadcast during the survey period in 1969 contained some form of violence, and eight episodes of violence occurred during each hour of broadcast time. Programs such as wrestling are the most violent of all programming. Many parents thinks that wrestling had a positive impact on their kids life. “ My son was very shy and kept to himself, but since he started watching wrestling his confidence level has improved 100%,” said Joe Hurles, a news reporter. Others suggest that parents should explain to their children that wrestling is a sport and it is not real, so they can watch it in a different perspective. They say that wrestling is there to entertain children that’s all that matters. It’s not real, its entertaining.
When children are taught how to tie their shoes, it is because of how their parents showed them. When children are taught how to do math problems, it is because of how their teachers showed them. So with all of these role models, why is there so much violence? It is because children learn from what they see, even if it's on the big screen. Violence in movies should have strict regulation because it has negative effects on the behavior of children. The negative effects of children’s behavior are said that in 1991, children under the age of ten committed more than 1000 acts of aggravated assault and 81 cases of forcible rape. “ It is hard to believe that just viewing a movie could be so detrimental to children, but there is indeed evidence of specific reenactments of actions in these movies. Unfortunately, most of these movies are extremely violent, containing graphic sex scenes, bad language, and of course violent deaths”, stated William Bennett, from his book, The Index of Cultural Indicators.
Many parents believe that television does not affect the attitude of their children, and they ignore it, hoping that any negative effects will go away sooner or later. The reason being is that some parents spend too much time working and less time caring for their children. Parents can be effective in reducing the negative effects of viewing television in general and violent television in particular by watching television with their children. Parents can point out differences between fantasy and reality in depictions of violence. They can also help children understand that in real life, violence is not funny.
Violence on television promotes children’s behavior. It influences the lives and attitudes of young children as they grow up. It is often quite hard to prevent children from watching bad TV shows, but in reality children cannot control the number of hours they spend in front of the television.