Violence in Media and Child Rearing

Given such significant changes and the expansion of visual culture, it is worth examining and analyzing the changes that occur in individuals due to various audiovisual media. It is impossible for someone to engage in any activity for several hours weekly without it affecting them.

The influence of media on children and adolescents has often been a focus for educators and psychologists. Research confirms the media’s powerful role in shaping the young person’s personality, largely by shaping their views and attitudes through specific knowledge and the promotion of certain values.

Research conducted among middle school students on "How do you spend your free time?" showed that media plays an important role in young people`s lives: 75% of students said they watch TV, play computer games, or use the internet in their free time; 38% listen to youth-oriented music, particularly hip-hop, disco polo, heavy metal, and rock; 34% spend time studying, attending extra classes, and learning foreign languages; 5% go to discos, and 5% spend their time going to the theater or cinema.

As seen in these findings, the presence of media in the lives of children and adolescents is significant. Time spent watching violent content on TV affects behavior, encouraging imitation of antisocial behaviors seen in film heroes, fighting, verbal aggression, vulgarity, disputes, and aggressive fantasies. It decreases sensitivity to evil and harm and leads to anxiety, sleep difficulties, and nightmares. For older children, such programs provoke more aggression than fear.

Scientific studies show that children and adolescents regularly exposed to violent media are more inclined to use violence. They learn by observing others, and mass media, by providing models, enables such observation. Television and video games often portray negative, immoral, aggressive behavior patterns. The content of programs watched affects viewers` knowledge, ways of evaluating events, attitudes, interests, lifestyles, and consumption patterns.

Through frequent TV viewing and gaming, there is an internalization—absorption—of the values presented by these characters. Watching horror-filled, violent programming disrupts young viewers’ emotional, cognitive, and social development.


Scenes of torture, murder, and killings shown on the screen cause fear and aggression in children. The brutal reality shown on television leads to irritability, nervousness, emotional tension, and a lack of security. The inability to release tensions while watching TV causes accumulation and disrupts children’s behavior, potentially leading to emotional outbursts or desensitization to strong stimuli. Regular exposure to violence creates desensitization, so victims of violence no longer evoke empathy, and aggression no longer seems wrong.

Television program creators, in the battle for viewership, attempt to show shocking and extraordinary events. Television often overrepresents violence compared to reality. Viewers now struggle to find shows about genuine love, friendship, and selflessness, while a “culture of death,” evil, pornography, aggression, and violence is the daily norm.

It is concerning that scenes of horror, cruelty, and violence are increasingly broadcasted by different stations in both documentary and news programs, as well as in feature films and even cartoons for children. At the end of 2000, 3,160 scenes of violence were recorded within one week across four Polish TV channels (TVP 1, TVP 2, Polsat, and TVN). According to the research, an average of five brutal scenes are shown per hour, with one person dying per hour of programming. Polsat showed the most scenes of violence in a week at 1,401; TVN followed with 962 scenes; TVP 1 with 479; and TVP 2 with 318. TVN had the most deaths with 245 lives lost over the week. The language used by characters also leaves much to be desired, with frequent vulgarity—Polsat was again at the top with 234 such words, followed by TVN with 152, TVP 2 with 107, and TVP 1 with 51.

This is the situation in Poland. In the United States, 400 billion violent scenes are broadcast annually, with 20 billion being pornographic. The average American child speaks to their parents for 5.5 minutes daily, compared to 7.5 minutes in Poland, while they spend approximately 4 hours watching TV daily. By the time a child graduates from elementary school, they will have witnessed around 28,000 on-screen murders or killings, and by age 18, as many as 200,000. They spend 900 hours per year in school and 1,800 hours in front of the TV, clearly illustrating who and what is influencing the upbringing of the younger generation.

Televised brutality gives young viewers a negative world view where friendship, kindness, and honesty are rare, replaced by conflict, deceit, and revenge. Children develop a belief in the prevalence of such behaviors. Constant exposure to violence through mass media leads to tolerance of evil, indifference toward victims of violence, and acceptance of aggression as a normal part of life.

Television’s negative portrayals most significantly impact the youngest generation. They are highly impressionable, unable to distinguish fiction from reality, and lack critical distance to what they watch, which disrupts their emotional, cognitive, and social development.

Over the last 30 years in the USA, many government and non-government organizations have studied the link between TV violence and increased aggression in children and youth. Most studies find that around 80% of all programs in the USA contain violence, with an average of 5.2 violent acts per hour, a situation mirrored in Poland. The conclusions drawn from research indicate that media violence teaches children to use violence.

Extensive research shows that media violence leads to aggressive behavior in the real world, with more aggressive children watching more on-screen violence.


This raises a question: Do these children grow up to be more aggressive adults? The answer is yes, and there is evidence to support this.

A 1970 study in New York State followed 800 children aged 8-9, noting their TV viewing habits and testing their aggression levels. Ten years later, researchers found and retested most of these children, now aged 18-19, and categorized them into three aggression levels: high, medium, and low. Ten years later, children who had watched more violence were found to have higher aggression levels regardless of their starting aggression level.

The findings suggest that viewing violence indeed increases aggression rather than the reverse—that innate aggression leads to a greater interest in televised violence.

The same individuals were re-evaluated in 1982, now aged 30. High childhood aggression levels were linked to high antisocial behavior at 30. The study showed that the three groups of children aged 8 exhibited the following behaviors at 30, based on four criteria:

• The more aggressive the child at 8, the higher their aggression level at 30.
• High aggression levels are associated with a higher rate of crimes committed at 30.
• More aggressive children give harsher punishments to their children at 30 (e.g., spanking or using a belt).
• Aggression also correlated with a higher rate of traffic violations and driving under the influence.

In August 2000, four major American health associations issued a unanimous statement on media violence. The American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Psychological Association, and American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, based on 30 years of research, concluded that prolonged exposure to violence in TV programs, films, and video games can lead to long-term hostility, aggressive behaviors, and desensitization to violence in everyday life.

Television has a significant influence on viewers. It affects thoughts, will, feelings, and imagination, reshaping life experiences, worldview, and self-perception. Television not only shapes individual personalities but also influences society, directly linking it to the issue of mass culture. For these reasons, it is worth examining the media content consumed by children and youth.

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Bibliography
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2. Results of a study conducted on a group of 500 high school students in a large city, available from the author.
3. www.rzeczpospolita.pl/raport/
4. D.A. Scott, "Pornografia i jej wpływ na rodzinę, społeczeństwo i kulturę," Gdańsk 1995
5. L. Rowell Huesmann Ph.D., "Screen Violence and Real Violence: Understanding the Link," presented at the IV International Scientific Conference on Media and Education, Poznań 2002.
6. Iwona Ulfik-Jaworska, "Czy gry komputerowe mogą być niebezpieczne?" Wychowawca 1/2002, pp. 12-15
7. A. Gondek, "O języku telewizji," p. 81, in Media in Culture, Lublin 2000