Television sets and movies nowadays are universally available in every home with 98% representing them and an average household take almost 7 hours of their time to watch them and 15 minutes of watching the television daily (Kerby, par 12). With 86% of the American believing that, the Sex and Violence in movies and television are more offensive than ever by influencing the good morals and values of both the children, youths and adults in the society. This has led to most parents complaining about the kind of materials shown in the television entertainment that are not educative at all. According to the survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, most adults about 75% of the 1,505 prefer the government to come up with rules that restricts some broadcast contents that are more likely to influence the good moral values in the society.
Why should one decide to watch such kind of stuff in television and movies? Some years back, such sex materials were never available in the market but of recent, the materials have increased three times compared with some years back hence striking the curiosity of the youths wanting to watch them frequently just for the entertainment purposes hence influencing themselves. Another reason is the foul language used before, was more compared with the kind of language that has been used today which does not educate at all. Moreover, the final reason was the violent incidents occurred almost equally in the same years but the intensity of such materials all of a sudden increased for examples the movies. With these three contents, sexual contents, coarse language and violent materials both combined in the market or society triggered both the children and the youth having the eagerness of watching them.
For instance, watching violent stuffs in the screen has of late has encouraged violence behavior due to people forgetting that whatever they see on television is mare entertainment and should never be applied in real life. These has been proved by the research performed by the American Psychological Association which has revealed that the 40 years of research on the link between TV violence and the real life situation in terms of violence has been ignored for quite sometime (Kerby, par 9).
When it comes to offensive television contents, sexual materials and offensive language, both go hand in hand because whatever language that is used in such sex materials, can be borrowed and be applied in real life especially by children who at times end up disrespecting their parents or guardians because of the influence they get from this television screens. Youths were also encouraged by these contents to have sex relations before marriage. Other forms of entertainment such as the movies, DVDs and CDs have also contributed greatly. According to Hazelden, par 5 Entertainment industries such as Hollywood has also faced the wrath of parents who insist that the amount of sexual content and violence in television and their movie shows today should reduce especially when it comes in the evening when the children are in the leaving room watching.
With such kinds of watching, certain issues are likely to arise. When a young kid watches an action movie, the possibility of him or her wanting to experiment the same actions they watched before is very high. Youths and adults are also part when it comes to such matters. Some social scientists have concluded that they have been unable to find out that this media sex and violence has been causing real life violent behavior. Reason has been most people and media industries have been seeking for some prove hence becoming so hard to safe the situation. Other issues that have contributed to the fight against Sex and Violence in movies and television are the crusade issues, some critics argue that the restrictions made are a form of censorship hence denying the artists a chance to market themselves and express themselves.
Then how can these issues or such influences of Sex and Violence in movies and television sets at least avoided. All this has to start with parents to their children. All the parents need to do is to pay much attention to the kind of programs their children watch and even at times watch some programs with them (Daphne par 3). This will solve the issue of children growing under certain behaviors and morals up to their youths.
Apart from watching with their children and monitoring them, they should also set some limits on the amount of time their children need to spent on television and encourage them on watching the educative programs only. Guidance among the children should is to be given on the kinds of material they are watching in their television sets in the leaving rooms. For instance, when a child is watching an action movie, then the parent should clarify to their children that whatever they are watching, there is no reality in real life and if practiced in real life, then it will bring some bad consequences such as death or people hurting each other.
When it comes to the contents being watched, parents should avoid the issue of exposing their children on the violence and sex materials for they are known to corrupt the young ones minds since they grow wanting to discover and experience the real life. To avoid this, if there is nothing important to be watched at that moment, then there is need to switch off the television and do other important stuff. Finally, since all the children are considered to belong among the society, it is very important for parents to corporate with each other by even educating your fellow parents on the issues brought about by too much television and movie watching especially sex and violence movies. This will help them set the same standards about television and film violence.
With all this put in practice, it would disapproved those critics who defend their products due to them wanting to benefit themselves without even looking at the consequences that are real likely to influence the children and adults. Christianity should be in the forefront fighting the cultural influences that are of negative content that are likely to affect the children and youths. By this, then Christians should be concerned about the impact television (and other forms of media) has on our neighbors and our society as a whole.
The television industry has become part of our lives that we often become aware of its subtle and insidious influence. With the number of people watching television, increasing everyday, then carefulness of watching some programs needs to be consideration by parents in terms of what they are watching in the families (Olsson, 20). Christians should educate the society on the important morals and values that needs to be adhered rather than assume that it has some impact it poses.
Nevertheless, television viewing is really affecting both the adults and the children in some obvious ways. The ignorance of the growing body of some data, which gives the view that televised imagery, does affect our perceptions and behaviors. That is why there is need for Christianity not letting it alone the television industry to conform us to the world but instead people should be the ones developing the Christian views.
The debate over sex and violence on television has been going on for several years. Many researchers have supported, while few are against restrictions. There are various negative factors of sex and violence on television, such as creating fear, aggressive, crimes and many more. This paper is going to discuss the reasons why sex and violence on television should be restricted.
Some television programs, like guns, murders, shooting, explosions, punching, screaming stabbing, car chases, disasters, death and smashes creates a great fear to the viewers. Sex and violence on television is able to persuade people to commit offenses and become aggressive. This is can be caused by watching a single violent program more frequently. Those children watch programs in which violence is more realistic and frequently repeated are more likely to imitate whatever they have seen.
On the other hand, pornography is now mostly available on television to children all over the world. Watching of pornography adds no value especially to the children, because this can even lead to rapes, adultery, sexual molestation and other illicit acts.
Children from United States of America spend most of their time watching television (Atkin 12). The Act against violence project, states that an average children use two to four hours per day viewing television. According to the Kaiser foundation, nearly all children in the United States that is 99% just stay home and watch television and one-third they have television in their bedrooms. Therefore, the more a child watch television, the lesser the time a kid has for physical activities. In addition, television’s adverts of food target kids are in excess calories for example hamburger. These adverts encourage deprived eating habit, plus snacks while viewing television this leads to obesity.
According to the Act against violence, the violent deeds are learned, that is whatever a kid learn at an early ages will have a greater impacts in their lives. Eighty one percent of parents have witnessed their children imitating either positive or negative behaviors from television that is by Kaiser Foundation report. Therefore, children can imitate live model also what they have seen on television with no clear understanding of their actions (Anderson 6)
The researchers from the university of Michigan says that children who uses most of their time watching television they become aggressive adults. It demonstrated that women and men who views violent television programs are more likely to show violent propensities as adult. The report still confirmed that violent programs that most likely have the majority harmful effects on children’s cognitive advancement are those hero is defensible in being violent and children are most probably to imitate the hero.
Since television has exposured both children and adult to impressive the telecommunications Act (1996) stated that, within 2 years of its channel televisions should be manufactured with a V-shape. This give parents permission to block some television program, which they may think or perceive they are destruction to their kids through working with television rating system. The television programs apart from news and sports could receive ratings and parent could use these ratings to determine the program to block. The effectiveness of the system depends on the size of the utility of the television rating system. The first system was developed by entertainment industry and was called TV parental guidelines. This enabled the parents to block programs that would display information concerning the sex and violence.
In conclusion, the sex and violence on television should be restricted, because it impairs commercial reminiscence through consuming concentration and punctual sexual and violent thinking, hence reducing the like hood that commercial communication is encoded into long-term memory.