TV violence in the past, didn’t glorify it, but did distinguish between good & bad.
Parents used to have some control as well. Adults should be able to distinguish between reality and fantasy, right and wrong.
TV violence in the past, didn’t glorify it, but did distinguish between good & bad.
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Very true. And it was always easy to know which ones were the good guys and which ones were the bad guys.
That’s an important point.
I’m in favor of freedom of speech, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s healthy for anyone anywhere any time to be exposed to anything and everything that the media produce.
The age of the viewer is a factor.
The amount of viewing is a factor.
I’ve read multiple studies and argued with a few conservatives on this issue.
The cigarette analogy is a good one.
Common sense (and it’s backed up by various studies) says that allowing a young child to spend hour after hour immersed in gory, violent imagery cannot be healthy for his development. IIRC, the most critical ages were 8-12 years.
Consider these differences from the past: Your point about the glorification of violence. Your point about distinguishing good from bad. The level of goriness is much higher than in the past. The frequency of violence is much higher than in the past. The number of hours spent viewing violence is much higher than in the past. The number of sources is much higher than in the past. Kids used to only see movies, so maybe once a week. Then TV became common, but the number of channels and the shows available were limited. Now many, if not most, kids have access to cable which means that by flipping channels they are able to view violence 24/7 if they want to. Most parents are not monitoring, much less restricting, their kids viewing because they are more concerned with being pals than with being parents. Add in the internet. Add in violent video games.
This all serves to “normalize” violence in the mind of the viewer - even more so in the mind of a younger viewer. Decision making skills and self-restraint are not fully developed until the 20s. Coping mechanisms and patterns are established primarily in the late teens and early twenties.
Many viewers are unable to comprehend the reality of violence when they have been exposed to so much artificial violence. On TV, victims are often fully recovered by the next week.
For many viewers, the constant exposure to violence makes them jaded. Think back to something you once found distasteful - gutting a fish, dissecting a frog, changing a diaper. For most of us, if we repeat those actions on a regular basis, they lose their initial “ick” factor and become fairly mundane. The same happens with violence. It loses its shock value. In doing so, especially on such a wide swath of the population, it steals some of our humanity.