This article originally appeared in the January-February 1997 Children's Advocate newsmagazine, published by Action Alliance for Children.

TV: The violence teacher

By Jean Tepperman

• By age 18, the average American child will have viewed about 200,000 acts of violence on television alone.
• The level of violence during Saturday morning cartoons is higher than during prime time. Prime time includes between three and five violent acts per hour, while Saturday morning cartoons show between 20 and 25 per hour.
• Media violence is especially damaging to children under age eight because "they don't have enough real-world experience to have a good sense of what's realistic," says media-violence expert Ron Slaby. "When we see a guy's head blown off, older people know this doesn't happen often. But younger kids don't know that. They may assume it's probable."
• Television rarely shows negative consequences of violence. Children's programs are the least likely to depict long-term negative consequences of violence. They frequently portray violence as humorous.
• TV news programming decisions add to media violence. U.S. news shows, for example, spend more than twice as much time on violent stories as Canadian news shows and are much more likely to open with a violent story ("If it bleeds, it leads.")

Sources: George Gerbner, Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania; Ronald Slaby, Ph.D., Education Development Center; National Television Violence Study, Mediascope; Roger Johnson, Ph.D., Ramapo College and Gordon Russell, Ph.D., Univ. Of Lethbridge, Alberta; Vivian Chavez, UC Berkeley School of Public Health.