Are Wolves really in Sheep's Clothes??

Current television programming for kids is not that different than 20 years ago; however, the violence in it has changed into something extremely realistic and ubiquitous (Parents Television Council 2).  In recent study by ’Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing’’ by Parents Television Council, one can find answers on question like:  does TV influence kids to behave more violently and disrespectful towards parents, do children start with sexual life significantly earlier because of sexual content in TV cartoons, or how often violent content is seen in cartoons.  This extensive research was focusing on eight TV networks such as ABC, Fox, NBC, the Disney Channel, etc. airing mainly after school, which means from 3 p.m. - 10 p.m. during a week, and on Saturday from 7 a.m. - 1:00 p.m., and this process continued for four weeks.

 According to the PTC, during these four weeks they have found 3488 incidents of violence, which means that every hour children can see approximately 8 incidents of violence (7). Moreover, they have found 858 incidents of verbal abuse, 260 cases of instances of foul language (‘’stupid’’, ‘’loser’’, ‘’butt’’), 622 incidents of problematic attitudes/ behaviors like lying and bullying, 275 instances of sexual content, and lastly 295 instances of sexual concept (7). Parent Television Council focused also on the social relationships towards parents, and teachers, and they discovered that in most cases TV shows treat parents with a respect - 106 cases of positive, 94 cases of negative; however, teachers are portrayed negatively by 3:1 margin (8). These results were also described more complexly in terms of what TV channels is the worst, and which TV shows is showing the most violence scenes.

These findings are extremely terrifying, not only that we can clearly see that violent cartoons are everywhere, but the fact that children are impressionable, and they learn not only from parent, and peers, but also from television that contains of 3488 incidents of violence in 4 weeks  (Parents Television Council 2). And it is not a news that it was proven that violent programming increases the probably for violent behavior (Parents Television Council 3).  From my point of view, this paper perfectly summarizes the content that is available everyday for children, and frankly results are not positive at all. While reading this paper, I thought that every cartoon has some scene with violent content. And frankly, this is almost the case, because right now either if I watch cartoon with my 6 years old brother or 1 year old one, I can see fight scene, or inappropriate language everywhere. It is more than urgent to watch our children, talk to them about the content and always to remind them that this is fiction. Because they have been many people saying: ‘’ Why should I care, I have watched violent cartoons, and I just turned out fine’’ (Parents Television Council 2), but according to Parents Television Council, violence in cartoons is not new, but “what has changed is that the violence is ubiquitous, often sinister, and in many cases frighteningly realistic” (2). Moreover, these days cartoons are everywhere, not matter what time, you always have the access to watch it and it is not like before. If we will compare Vcelka Maja cartoon with the Naruto cartoon, I already talked about in my previous post, one can see that the violence is different in each cartoon. Because nowadays it is more realistic, and as Parents Television Council suggested it is more intense and graphic (17).  And as Parents Television Council claims parents must remember that TV is not only entertainment tool anymore - children younger than 8 years cannot really differentiate between reality and fantasy (18);therefore, they ‘’have to be vocal in opposing these cartoons, because companies sponsoring such content must know that they are helping to contribute to a culture of violence’’ (18). 

The winner of the most violent content - Teen Titus:

Reference:

Parents Television Council. Parents Television Council. 2 Mar. 2006. Web. 10 May 2013.

<http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/publications/reports/childrensstudy/childrensstudy.pdf>