Adolescents who watch more than one hour of television a day are more likely to commit aggressive and violent acts as adults, according to a 17-year study reported in the journal Science.
The study, which tracked more than 700 adolescents into adulthood, found that young people watching one to three hours of television daily were almost four times more likely to commit violent and aggressive acts later in life than those who watched less than an hour of TV a day.
Girls as well as boys exhibited increased aggression, according to the study, which was hailed by psychologists and social scientists as more evidence of TV's harmful effects.
"It's a very important study and has a great deal of credibility--it very niftily isolates television as a causal factor," said George Comstock, a researcher on media violence at Syracuse University in New York.
It is also the first study, Comstock said, to clearly link TV viewing among adolescents to later, adult violence.
Source: Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-hew-kidviolence2002,0,2251451.story
An important study here! Many have suggested this link in the past, but it's nice that researchers have done the hard work of being patient over 17-years in order to complete this study. It might not be the last word on the issue (I'm sure it won't be!) but parents have greater reason now to place limits on amount of television screen time they permit their children to consume. (Of course, it will also be important to understand that kids are watching less television these days and are consuming more of their video via the Internet and downloads. I may seem obvious, but I want to caution parents that it's not the television medium that leads to the aggressive and violent behaviors in later life, but the content of what adolescents watch.)
TV is a ubiquitous media that has etched in our day-to-day life transferring loads of data, news and cultural and/or anti-cultural fine ingredients into our brain and, now, we’re facing the information overload of our own brains.
Posted by: Soumyaranjan Dash | August 11, 2008 at 06:41 AM