when female action hero's first made it to the little screen I was on the couch cheering them on - but as the stories for the latest versions of the fem hero's have unfolded - with rising violence and bloodshed, blatant sexual scenes often including S&M or child, a ever increasing number of stories based on assualts on the hero's womb rather than featuring their heroics and the fem heros (janeway, xena, buffy etc) offing themselves in acts of self sacrifice rather than finding ways to outsmart and defeat their opponents the way their male counter parts always have - I had to take pause and wonder - what was really going on. Then Columbine - and a reality check on the whole issue of violence and kids give me serious pause - what effect do stories really have on kids
back in the late 60's early 70's no one believed that smoking caused cancer - after all people had been smoking since well forever - everyone had always smoked right? Study after study kept drawing the same smoking = cancer conclusion
but each was put down/disbelieved - until finally the weight of the body of evidence could no longer be ignored - and some serious criminal investigations showed the coverups - and now the legal battles still rage as smokers continue to die
So now it appears the next battle takes shape
advertisers spend billions for 30 second spots to sell their soap - Why? Because - those spots effect peoples buying habits
advertisers want younger and younger people to sell their soap to - Why? Because their research shows that their 30sec ads influence the buying habits of kids for a life time -
brand a kid young enough to your product and you have them for life
and this yen for young viewers to brand has driven tv to produce shows which are all the better to attract younger viewers with - Why? because advertisers will pay more for a younger audience because their ads have greater influence on their buying habits for the long term
for 30 and 60 second jingles its clear - they have effect and the effect is long term -- yet we cont to disbelieve that adult behaviour can be effected by 30 and 60 min stories - that kids have become enthralled with
yet the body of evidence continues to build - proving viewing violence as a child results in violent acts as an adult.
does everyone who smoked get lung cancer - no
but the numbers tell us that a larger than normal proportion of them do - and the longer you smoked the more likely the chances
does every 20 something who watched road runner have a criminal record, beat their spouse, etc - no
but the evidence tells us that a larger than normal proportion of them do - and with viewing more violence the greater the chances
compare the road runner and 6 million dollar man to the violence of shows like buffy and angel - and tell me - what we can expect a decade from now from the kids these show target - who grew up watching women getting bashed around, raped and murdered on a regular basis, with little consequence to the perpetrators of said violence?
3 reports on a recent study on tv violence and long term behaviour
www.msnbc.com/news/882914.asp?cp1=1
Adult aggression, children’s TV tied Long-term study links violence and television
ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 10 — Both boys and girls who watch a lot of violence on television have a heightened risk of aggressive adult behavior including spouse abuse and criminal offenses, no matter how they act in childhood, a new study says. While the results may not be surprising, experts say the study is important because it included hundreds of participants, and showed the effect in females as well as males.
Huesmann said televised violence suggests to young children that aggression is appropriate in some situations, especially when it is used by charismatic heroes. THE PARTICIPANTS were interviewed from ages 6 to 9, and again in their early 20s, making the study one of the few to follow children into adulthood to gauge the long-term effects of televised violence.
The findings are presented in the March issue of the journal Developmental Psychology by psychologists L. Rowell Huesmann and colleagues at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.
Huesmann said televised violence suggests to young children that aggression is appropriate in some situations, especially when it is used by charismatic heroes. It also erodes a natural aversion to violence, he said.
He recommended that parents restrict viewing of violent TV and movies by young children and preteens as much as possible.
OTHER FACTORS RULED OUT
The analysis argued against the idea that aggressive children seek out TV violence, or that the findings were due to the participants’ socioeconomic status or intelligence, or their parents’ childrearing practices. The study involved 329 adults who were initially surveyed as children in the late 1970s. Researchers interviewed them again as adults, along with their spouses or friends, and checked crime records.
As children, the participants were rated for exposure to televised violence after they chose eight favorite shows from 80 popular programs for their age group and indicated how often they watched them. The programs were assessed by researchers for amount of physical violence. Programs such as “Starsky and Hutch,” “The Six Million Dollar Man” and Road Runner cartoons were deemed very violent. As young adults, men in the study who had scored in the top 20 percent on childhood exposure were about twice as likely as other men to have pushed, grabbed or shoved their wives during an argument in the year preceding the interview. Women who had scored in the top 20 percent were about twice as likely as other women to have thrown something at their husbands.
For one or both sexes, these “high TV-violence viewers” were also more likely than other study participants in the previous 12 months to have shoved somebody in anger; punched, beaten or choked an adult, or committed a crime or a moving traffic violation.
IDENTIFYING WITH THE VIOLENT
Along with viewing of violent TV, the participants had been asked as children how much they identified with violent TV characters and how realistic they judged various violent TV shows to be. Researchers found that high ratings on any of the three childhood measures predicted higher ratings of overall aggression in adulthood. It made no difference how aggressive the participants had been as children.
Dennis Wharton, spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters, said not all studies find a link between TV viewing and violent behavior. “I think the jury is still out about whether there is a link,” he said.
The American Psychological Association, however, has concluded that viewing violence on TV or other mass media does promote aggressive behavior, particularly in children. Other mental-health and medical groups have taken similar stands.
Joanne Cantor, professor emerita of communications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the new study was “a very strong addition to what I consider a large amount of data that points in the same direction.”
www.smh.com.au/articles/2...23791.html
TV drives kids to violence
By Michael Bradley
March 11 2003
The Six Million Dollar Man and his fellow TV heroes of the 1970s, Starsky and Hutch, could hardly be considered violent viewing by today's standards. Neither could the Bionic Woman, nor Wyle E. Coyote, but new research suggests their on-screen violence was sufficient to have a devastating impact on some children who watched them.
In a study akin to the Seven Up documentary series, researchers have followed a group of 557 Americans through two decades in an attempt to establish whether childhood viewing habits influence adult behaviour.
In 1977, the then primary school children were asked which violent TV shows they most enjoyed, the characters they most identified with, and whether they thought the violence was realistic.
Starsky and Hutch, The Six Million Dollar Man and the Roadrunner cartoon were some of the shows rated in the study as very violent. Now psychologists from the University of Michigan have re-interviewed 329 of the original respondents. They studied their criminal records and traffic infringements and questioned their spouses and friends.
The 20 per cent of boys who most liked to identify with violent characters were much more likely to grow up to be criminals. They had been convicted of crimes at more than three times the rate of the other men. They were also 88 per cent more likely to have beaten their wives. Women who watched the most violence as girls reported having punched, beaten or choked another adult at more than four times the rate of their contemporaries. They were also more likely to have thrown objects at their spouses.
The research, which will be published in Developmental Psychology, said adult aggression was predicted by the children's exposure to violence, their identification with aggressive TV characters of their own sex, and a strong belief that violent shows depicted life "just like it is". This was found to be true for boys and girls and irrespective of their initial aggression level, intellectual capability, social status, or their parents' aggressiveness or parenting style.
"Media violence can affect any child from any family," it said. "It is not only the already violence-prone child who is likely to be affected. Every violent TV show increases a little bit the likelihood of a child growing up to behave more aggressively in some situation."
But the report warned violence that was rewarded was most detrimental - so Dirty Harry killing a criminal was more likely to incite later violent behaviour than a gruesome murder by a killer who is ultimately brought to justice.
Indeed, Dirty Harry could be worse than Hannibal Lecter, according to Margot Prior, Professor of Psychology at Melbourne University. She said the "good guy" cop eliminating a criminal should be of far greater concern to parents than the patently evil Dr Lecter.
"You can never be unequivocal about this because some kids have a predisposition to pay attention to this sort of material and are badly affected, while others are not," she said. "But anything which is rewarded is far more likely to re-occur."
Professor Prior also noted that "reality violence" - such as news and current affairs programs - was far more believable to children than any violent cartoon, and therefore far more dangerous.
edition.cnn.com/2003/HEAL...olence.ap/
Kids' viewing of TV violence linked to aggression as adults
Monday, March 10, 2003 Posted: 1406 GMT (10:06 PM HKT)
The current study examined 329 adults who were initially surveyed as children in the late 1970s.
As kids, they were rated according to what kind of shows they watched and how often.
"Starsky and Hutch," "The Six Million Dollar Man" and Roadrunner cartoons were some of the shows researchers deemed very violent.
Kids who scored in the top 20 percent of exposure to TV violence were later found to be more aggressive as adults.
(AP) -- People who watch violent television as children behave more aggressively even 15 years later, according to one of the few TV violence studies to follow children into adulthood.
The effect appeared in both sexes and regardless of how aggressive a person was as a child, researchers found.
The study linked violent TV viewing at ages 6 to 9 to such outcomes as spouse abuse and criminal convictions in a person's early 20s.
Experts said the results are no surprise, but added that the study is important because it used a wide range of measures, included many participants and showed the effect in females as well as males.
The work is presented in the March issue of the journal Developmental Psychology by psychologists L. Rowell Huesmann and colleagues at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research.
Huesmann said televised violence suggests to young children that aggression is appropriate in some situations, especially when it's used by charismatic heroes. It also erodes a natural aversion to violence, he said.
He recommended that parents restrict viewing of violent TV and movies by toddlers through pre-teens as much as possible.
The analysis argued against the idea that aggressive children seek out TV violence, or that the findings were due to the participants' socioeconomic status or intelligence, or their parents' childrearing practices.
The 'Starsky and Hutch' factor
The study involved 329 adults who were initially surveyed as children in the late 1970s. To check on adult aggressive behavior, researchers interviewed them and their spouses or friends, and checked crime records.
As children, the participants were rated for exposure to televised violence after they chose eight favorite shows from 80 popular programs for their age group and indicated how much they watched them. The programs were assessed by researchers for amount of physical violence. Such programs as "Starsky and Hutch," "The Six Million Dollar Man" and Roadrunner cartoons were deemed very violent.
As young adults, researchers found, men who had scored in the top 20 percent on childhood exposure were about twice as likely as other men to have pushed, grabbed or shoved their wives during an argument in the year preceding the interview. Women in the top 20 percent were about twice as likely as other women to have thrown something at their husbands.
For one or both sexes, these "high TV-violence viewers" were also more likely than other study participants in the previous 12 months to have shoved somebody in anger; punched, beaten or choked an adult, or committed a crime or a moving traffic violation.
Besides childhood exposure to violent TV, the participants had been asked as children about two other traits: how much they identified with violent TV characters and how realistic they judged various violent TV shows to be.
Researchers found that high ratings on any of the three childhood measures predicted higher ratings on a measure of overall aggression in adulthood.
Dennis Wharton, spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters, said not all studies find a relationship between TV viewing and violent behavior, and "I think the jury is still out about whether there is a link."
The American Psychological Association, however, has concluded that viewing violence on TV or other mass media does promote aggressive behavior, particularly in children. Other mental-health and medical groups have taken similar stands.
Joanne Cantor, professor emerita of communications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, called the new study "a very strong addition to what I consider a large amount of data that points in the same direction."
Craig A. Anderson, a violence researcher at Iowa State University, called the work "elegant in its design and execution."
Edited by: helpful information perhaps at: 3/10/03 11:15:27 am