TV can make adults violent
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Ocean_Islands | Thursday, March 28, 2002 - 07:23 pm     from the March 29, 2002 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0329/p01s05-ussc.html Mounting evidence links TV viewing to violence A new scientific report released today says television can affect violent behavior – even among adults. By Mark Sappenfield | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor SAN FRANCISCO - For much of the past half century, the link between watching violence on television and violent behavior in everyday life has seemed an open question – embraced by one study, rejected by another, and largely left unanswered by years of congressional inquiries. That, however, is rapidly changing. To a growing number of scientists and psychiatrists, the correlation between the two is no longer a point of debate, it is an established fact. A study released today in the journal Science adds to a large body of work that suggests some sort of connection. Already, six major pediatric, psychiatric, and medical associations have said that the evidence of a link is overwhelming, citing more than 1,000 studies in the past 30 years. As a result, the debate is increasingly splintering into a fight that echoes the recent antitobacco or global-warming campaigns, as a preponderance of scientists square off against a besieged industry and a smattering of contrarian colleagues. Many Americans are not yet convinced. On average, children still watch three hours of television a day, and calls to regulate the industry have resulted only in minor tweaks like the current ratings system. But with the scientific community presenting a more unified front – and casting the issue as one of public health, not taste – the pressure for more change is gaining momentum. "Clearly, with more exposure [to media violence, children] do become desensitized, they do copy what they see, and their values are shaped by it," says Susan Villani, a Baltimore, Md., psychiatrist who has reviewed the past 10 years of study on the subject. Not even the most ardent critic of TV violence argues that images of gunplay and kung fu are the sole causes of youth violence. Yet they can be significant. One study last year found a 25 percent decrease in violence in a San Jose, Calif., grade school where kids received classroom lessons in media awareness and were asked to watch only seven hours of TV a week for several months. Another in North Carolina showed that teenage boys who regularly watched professional wrestling were 18 percent more likely to get into a physical confrontation with a date. TV's effect on adult behavior Today's study, experts say, is particularly interesting for several reasons. It is the first survey of its scope to provide evidence that violent behavior is associated with television viewing beyond childhood – well into adolescence and adulthood. In addition, it claims a connection even when other factors such as childhood neglect and low family income are taken into account. "What this study serves to do is remove some of these variables," says Michael Brody of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Adolescents who watched more than one hour a day of television – regardless of content – were roughly four times more likely to commit aggressive acts toward other people later in their lives than those who watched less than one hour. Of those who watched more than three hours, 28.8 percent were later involved in assaults, robberies, fights, and other aggressive behavior. The study, led by Jeffrey Johnson of Columbia University in New York, followed 707 participants in upstate New York for 17 years, recording their TV viewing habits and tracking their behavior through periodic interviews and public documents. What it did not do, say critics, is prove that the television viewing necessarily caused the violence. The comment goes to the heart of the debate over the issue: Does TV play a part in making violent people, or are violent people naturally inclined to watch violence on TV? "I don't think there is any link at all," says Jonathan Freedman, a professor at the University of Toronto who disputes the statistic that thousands of studies have shown a link between television violence and violent behavior. Doubts within TV industry Members of the broadcasting industry share Mr. Freedman's skepticism of such media studies. "They spark a lot of interest, but nothing definite comes out that can establish a direct link," says Dennis Wharton of the National Association of Broadcasters in Washington. The industry also touts their cleaner fare: A recent study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington found a 29 percent drop in TV violence last season compared with 1998-99. Aspects of the criticism find broader support. It's true that some kids might be able to watch TV all day and not commit a single violent act. But some psychiatrists say that merely begs for more research about who might be influenced by TV and how. But most also insist that the vast majority of studies support a link. Granted, no study can definitively say that TV caused a violent act – it can only infer. But the results of one of the most researched areas in social science are pretty consistent, says professor Craig Anderson of Iowa State University in Ames. "It doesn't matter how you study it, the results are the same," says Mr. Anderson. Plus, for many, it's simply a matter of common sense. "If television doesn't influence kids, then why are so many people spending so many billions of dollars to advertise," says Dr. Brody. "It's not the sole cause, but even if it represents 10 percent of the reason [for violence], somebody should look at this." |
Ocean_Islands | Friday, March 29, 2002 - 03:58 am     Study Ties Television Viewing to Aggression Adults Affected As Well as Children By Shankar Vedantam Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, March 29, 2002; Page A01 Teenagers and young adults who watch even as little as an hour of television a day are more likely to get into fights, commit assaults or engage in other types of violence later in life, according to a provocative new study. The more television people watch, the more likely it appears that they will later become violent, an effect that researchers argued bolsters the case that it is television that causes the aggression. The study tracked the impact of television on violence among more than 700 young people over 17 years. Previous studies have found an association between television violence and aggression. But this is the longest study to track the consequences of TV viewing of any kind and the first to show that adults are affected as surely as children, the researchers said. If the study had examined violent programming alone, the link would have been more dramatic, they said. "The correlation between violent media and aggression is larger than the effect that wearing a condom has on decreasing the risk of HIV," said Brad Bushman, a professor of psychology at Iowa State University at Ames who wrote a commentary accompanying the study in today's issue of the journal Science. "It's larger than the correlation between exposure to lead and decreased IQ levels in kids. It's larger than the effects of exposure to asbestos. It's larger than the effect of secondhand smoke on cancer." The findings renewed debate over whether media violence contributes to violent behavior. Television and entertainment proponents said there was a long history of conflicting results on the issue. "The consensus is there is no consensus," said Dennis Wharton, a spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters. The National Cable and Telecommunications Association said in a statement that it supports "responsible television viewing" and that its ratings system allows viewers to block violent programs. Jonathan Freedman, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, said the study had failed to prove that television watching was the cause of the aggressiveness. "It has nothing to do with TV -- it has to do with lifestyle," he said. "People who watch more than three hours of TV are different than those who watch less than an hour." The researchers said they tried to account for that possibility by statistically eliminating the effects of parental neglect, poverty, dangerous neighborhoods, a history of psychiatric disorder and other independent risk factors for aggression. Although all the participants were from upstate New York, the researchers said the group was broadly representative of the northeastern United States. For the study, the researchers interviewed 707 teenagers about the amount of television they watched. In 1983, the average age of the group was 14. Eight years later, the scientists correlated the television statistics with police and FBI records of violence, and interviews with the participants. Of the group that watched less than an hour of TV a day, 5.7 percent had committed a violent act that resulted in serious injury, such as a broken bone. Among those who watched one to three hours, 18.4 percent had been violent. Of those who watched more than three hours a day, the rate of aggression was 25.3 percent. The researchers also re-interviewed the group about their television habits and followed up after another eight years. While 1.2 percent of the adults who watched less than one hour per day had committed a violent act, 10.8 percent of those who watched three or more hours had inflicted a bruise, scar or other assault. Men tended to be more likely to be violent than women. The only definitive way to establish a causal link between television content and the violence would be to conduct an experiment where some people are randomly made to watch more TV for several years while others are made to watch less, the researchers said. "To force people to watch a certain amount of TV for a lengthy period would not be permissible," said Jeffrey Johnson, a Columbia University clinical psychologist and the lead researcher. "It's analogous to research on cigarette smoking. . . . You couldn't force people to smoke a lot and see if they got cancer." Nielsen Media Research reports the average American household has the television on for more than eight hours a day. Children and teens between 2 and 17 years old watch TV more than three hours per day. Adult men watch more than four hours, and adult women more than five. Television violence may desensitize viewers, or depictions of violence without its real-life consequences may prompt viewers to assume that it is acceptable, the researchers speculated. George Gerbner, who has done pioneering work on television violence and is dean emeritus of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, argued that the biggest consequence of TV violence was insecurity, not aggression. Watching programs about violent crime on dark streets, for instance, does not turn people into muggers -- it makes them fear becoming victims. Even as violent crime in American society has declined, he said, heavy television viewing was more likely to make the viewers believe they lived in an unsafe world. "They may accept and even welcome repressive measures such as more jails, capital punishment, harsher sentences -- measures that have never reduced crime but never fail to get votes -- if that promises to relieve their anxieties," he wrote. "That is the deeper dilemma of violence-laden television." © 2002 The Washington Post Company |
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