Molly Olsen 08/06/97 12:47 PM Jennifer Taylor wrote: >I think children should be kept from watching certain shows. Violence on >TV directly causes violent behavior. Tim Bergfelder wrote: >Since justification for this claim comes purely from anecdotal evidence (as is usual in these >cases), let me reply with my own story: [story of watching violence without ill effects deleted] I agree with Tim and other posters that purely anecdotal evidence is not useful in determining the effect of TV violence on children. Yes, children do model behaviors, and everyone has an anecdote about *children* acting out what they see on TV. But children are more violent in their everyday lives by far than adults are, because they're still working on power struggles and forming identities and other social stuff that adults have outgrown. And they go through phases, try on personalities and behaviors of all kinds -- it's a very complex process, and the outcomes in adulthood are far from predictable. There's no evidence that TV violence causes adults to model violent behavior (no matter how old they were when they viewed it). In fact, you could argue that because a child modeling the behaviors of socially incorrect TV characters causes the child to be criticized by parents and adults, causing the child to eventually stop doing it, it's a learning experience for the child about social mores (as long as the adults hold up their end of the equation) -- a lesson that he/she might not learn without being able to see the material in the first place. How will you teach your child to discriminate between acceptable behavior and unacceptable behavior on TV? If he's allowed to model everything he sees, when he starts sneaking episodes of NYPD Blue without telling you at age 8 or 10, you could be in worse trouble. You'd be surprised how many kids believe "if it's on TV, it must be OK." You have to teach them out of that, IMO. Molly Olsen [log in to unmask] ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.sa.ua.edu/screensite