Is television bad for children?

Today's blog is brought to you by my contemporary persuasion class, and all the wonderful people in there that I will be speaking in front of today.

The Problem:
Children are watching large amounts of violent programing and are becoming violent themselves. This fact is clearly evidenced by the recent accidental killing involving a little boy who killed his sister when he practiced a wrestling move that he saw on tv on her.

Case study
Case study 2

Why is this happening?
Television does influence our actions, and it influences children even more then adults. Children mimic what they see on tv. Unfortunately, what they see on tv is fighting, shooting, stabbing and other forms of violence.Too many violent shows on television during hours when the most impressionable viewers are watching.

Family Guy example

What can we do about it?
Some special interest groups are advocating safe times when major stations will cut down on violent programing during times when more children are watching. The focus for this method is on the hours when children are just arriving home from school.

Another way to protect children from the effects of violent programing, is to make easier and more readily available parental controls for televisions. This form of parental control was the goal of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that made it a requirement for television makers to install a chip that would block violent programing using a rating system that the networks devised.

"Most critic[s] feel that the V-chip, a form of rating system, will fail in its effectiveness to monitor children as it has a proven history of failure in the past. Ratings such as "NC-17" had to be changed from "XXX", simply because it was becoming a symbol in modern culture, and became more of a right of passage for youth, rather than a deterrent." -Through the Wires