When it comes to moving pictures, television is by far the most invasive of all motion picture media. The vast majority of Australian households have televisions and the vast majority of Australians were brought up watching them regularly. Perhaps that’s why we’re all so trusting of TV and can barely remember a time before it was part of our lives. We may even feel that, since we were brought up on TV and unharmed by it, it’s unlikely to harm our children.

However, television has changed considerably since its Australian introduction in 1956, and so have our viewing habits. Back in the late-50s and early-60s, few households could afford their own TV sets, now at least nine out of every ten households in Australia and NZ have a television and six out of ten have two. The average household views more than 22 hours of television during the week and scores of households watch much more than this.

For many of us, television watching became a mainstay entertainment well after our formative years, however, that’s not the case for most children growing up today. Studies show that 4-month-old babies now watch an average of 44 minutes of TV a day, by 12-months that increases to an hour a day and, by the age of four, most children are watching TV for more than two-and-a-half hours each day.

According to a recent study by the University of South Australia, the average Australian child spends more than three hours a day watching TV and, as a consequence, children today are likely to be 15 to 20 per cent less fit than their parents were at the same age.

Perhaps even more disturbing, by the age of 18, the average Australian child will have spent more time watching television (14,000 hours) than attending school (12,000 hours) so TV is a big part of our kids’ lives.

The content of television programs has also changed considerably in its 48-year history and dramatically in the last 20 of those years. While television violence was introduced in the early days of TV, the violent imagery now gracing our screens is graphic beyond anything the early television executives could have imagined.

And children’s programming, like cartoons and other ‘action’ programs, generally contain more violence than adult programs, showing an average of 25 violent acts per hour as opposed to five violent acts an hour during prime time viewing.

In the US, it’s been estimated that by the age of 12, children have seen 8,000 dramatised murders on television and, by 18, they’ll have seen 40,000 murders and 200,000 dramatised acts of violence. Sadly, Australian children are not far behind with a large portion of local programming originating in the US.

It’s also important to note that children under 8 are not able to differentiate between fantasy and reality the same way adults do. This is one of the reasons younger children are so readily convinced that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny exist.

It’s also why young children often think the images they see on TV are actually happening inside the television, in some small world behind the glass screen. In a sense, to young children, the images they see on TV do not differ greatly from the reflection in a mirror – they still think it’s part of the real world and occurring just a few feet from where they sit.

Knowing this, parents can more readily grasp the reasons why violent imagery may cause harm to the developing brains of young children. So, the easiest way to determine suitable viewing for young children is to decide whether or not you’d encourage your kids to see the same images if they were occurring in real life, instead of on television.

In other words, would you encourage young children to view a horrific car accident if it occurred outside your home or view the corpse of someone shot dead nearby. Most parents would not -- they’d protect their kids from these sorts of sights in the real world. Yet, when TV brings similar scenes right into their lounge rooms, young children, who often interpret them to be real, are regularly permitted to view these graphic images.

How many children watched the planes crashing into the Twin Towers during the September 11th 2001 terrorist attack on the US -- images that were repeated time and again in the days that followed? And how many of these children thought each repeat of the footage was a new attack in progress?

What about all the images of the War on Terror, of the carnage in Iraq, in Bali, the beheadings, the bombs. Our television screens show more violence through news footage than just about any other programming and many of the most horrific images are shown repeatedly in news updates throughout the day, and throughout children’s viewing. Even evening news bulletins now begin at 4.30pm weekdays and continue on till 7.30 pm, depending on the station you tune into.

Violent incidents shown on the news are disturbing enough for adults, who understand footage is often repeated and may be occurring on the other side of the world. Imagine how terrifying these images must be for children who don’t have the capacity to understand these nuances. They can’t make the same distinctions and tend to worry what they’re seeing on the news is likely to happen to them or their families. This breeds fear in young children, desensitises older children to violence and makes our whole society more apprehensive and less trusting, leading to what experts call the ‘mean world syndrome’.

There’s no denying that television news is a vital source of information for our society but it may also be one of the biggest problems our children face.

Of course, television is not the only ‘moving picture’ medium accessed by children.

Most homes in this country also have video or DVD players and use them regularly to view rental movies. Children are often permitted to see rentals classified for older audiences and many films are classified differently when they reach the video stores too.

For example, big blockbusters, like Men in Black, are edited to meet classification codes at the cinema but it’s the unedited version that’s usually released on video, often under a different classification rating. For instance, Three Kings was rated PG at the movies, and edited, but the unedited video version is R-rated

These kinds of discrepancies make it difficult of adults, and children, to use the existing classification codes to their advantage. For many families, younger children will watch movies taken out by older siblings, and rated for more mature audiences, even when they know these films are considered inappropriate viewing for them.
At the cinemas, children will often try to sneak into films for older audiences or simply wait for the desired movie to come out on video or DVD where they can more easily access it. A high level of vigilance is clearly required if parents intend to protect their kids from inappropriate material.

Studies also suggest that children’s increasing obesity may be a by-product of too much TV and movie viewing and one Spanish study has found that children who watch a lot of TV are also more prone to accidents. This is because their view of reality can become distorted when watching large amounts of TV -- increasing the risk of getting hurt during play as kids attempt to recreate what they see on the small screen.

The US wrestling programs are a good example of viewing that can create problems because, while adults know the wrestling is ‘faked’, many children don’t. One recent US study found high school students who regularly watched wrestling were more likely to start a fight with a date or be a date fight victim, carry a gun or other weapon, fight, use non-prescription Ritalin and drive after drinking.

Another longitudinal study indicated girls in pre-school who watched many violent television programs were less likely to do well in school in their later years. Other studies quite conclusively show the introduction of TV correlates with increased aggression and violence in society.

However, it’s important to point out not all television programming has a detrimental effect on children. Much of the research undertaken clearly indicates children can learn good qualities and benefit from appropriate, positive programming. The medium of moving pictures is a powerful learning tool that, used properly, can provide great service to viewers, particularly children. But along with this ability to improve lives comes the risk that television, used to view graphic violence, can cause great harm to our children, as well as adults.

In all, more than 3,000 separate studies into the effects of television have been conducted in the last 40 years. One thousand of these studies specifically looked at the effects of violent entertainment and only about 18 (12 funded directly by the television industry) did not demonstrate a direct correlation between violent entertainment and violent behaviour.

The rest of the studies indicate there are three major consequences resulting from violent entertainment.

Firstly, it increases aggressive behaviour and/or brings about changes in attitudes and values that favour using aggression to solve conflicts.

Secondly, violent entertainment also desensitises viewers to the violence viewed, making them more tolerant to increasing levels of violence in our society.

Lastly, it increases fearfulness so viewers are more likely to overestimate their own risk of victimisation.

As many of the experts have been saying in recent years, the scientific debate is over -- we DO know there are negative effects to viewing violent entertainment but interestingly, the same cannot be said of watching sex on TV and in films. While extensive research into sexual content has also been undertaking, the findings have been very different.

Sex is a very controversial issue that evokes some kind of emotional response from most people, with many politicians over the years espousing the need to ‘protect’ society from sex. Church leaders and other conservatives have also voiced concerns and actively pursued ways to decrease sexual content in the media, all the while turning a blind eye to violent content as it’s escalated and ignoring the multitude of research on the harms of violent media.

The ‘anti-sex’ lobby have sought out, and even funded, research they hoped would prove what many of them already believe – that there is a scientific correlation between watching pornography and subsequent violent behaviour.

What’s been suggested is that porn turns everyday normal, non-violent men into sexual predators and/or increases their urge to act out violently. At a glance, it’s easy to show this hypothesis is flawed because sexual content, and pornography in particular, is accessed by much larger numbers of people within the community than there are known violent criminals.

However, many researchers have claimed there’s a link between pornography and violence and have sought to conclusively and scientifically establish this link, without success. Many government panels and committees have also attempted to find proof of the dangers of pornography and most have come to the conclusion that porn is bad and harmful, even when NO scientific evidence has been found.

For example, in 1990, the New Zealand Government convened the Indecent Publications Tribunal to explore these issues, calling on John Court to give evidence. Court, a former leader of the Festival of Light, who made his name by insisting there was evidence of a link between pornography and violence, was considered a ‘scientific’ source by the Tribunal so his evidence was automatically given much credence.

However, when specifically pressed by the Tribunal to confirm what research demonstrated the link existed, Court had to admit, “What I am saying is that we do not have evidence that there is such a causal link. I cannot sustain it from my data and I don’t know anybody who can.”

The Indecent Publications Tribunal went on to find harm, without any scientific evidence to substantiate that decision!

Other inquiries the world over have done the same.

Another case in point concerns the US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who in 1986 was asked to report independently to the Reagan administration’s hearings against pornography. After examining the available data, Koop had to admit no evidence of harm from pornography could be found (though those hearings also went on to find ‘harm’ where none existed and regardless of the lack of evidence).

In the end, it’s the conclusions of such hearings and tribunals that the anti-sex lobby cites, not the lack of evidence used when making these findings.

Another issue of concern that’s been raised, and researched, in regard to pornography is whether viewing sex causes sex crimes.

In the United States, treatment centres and law enforcement agencies have collected data on sex crimes for over 50 years and have used that data to substantiate whether sex offenders have become that way inclined through the use of porn. However, no correlations were found linking offenders’ crimes or behaviours to pornography, even after examining half a century’s worth of data.

Other research studies looking at the pornography intake of sex offenders have been unable to show that these individuals were ‘shaped’ by the use of porn. In fact, experts who have seriously explored the existing research, like Avondon Carol, are adamant that porn is not responsible for anyone’s descent into sex crimes and other criminal behaviour.

In a submission to the UK Home Affairs Inquiry in 1994, Carol writes, “Research into the background and behaviour of serious sex offenders has revealed that the causes of abusive/violent behaviour are found in early childhood and generally pre-date exposure to pornographic materials”. Carol also notes that serious offenders tend to “have had highly sexually repressive backgrounds.”

Having a childhood heavily laced with sexual repression seems to be a more common feature in the backgrounds of sex offenders than is sex or pornography. Dr Stephen Juan, from Sydney University, agrees, explaining that when sexual energy is repress in early childhood, that energy doesn’t just dissipate on its own. Instead it’s channelled into other directions, such as the development of odd fixations about one’s body or someone else’s body (like fetishes).

“Another example is serial killers who get their sexual pleasure from raping and murdering someone,” says Juan. “If you look at their childhoods, uniformly they come from families that are very repressive, denying sexuality, a lot of guilt, a lot of punishment as part of the childrearing. There’s a lot of spankings, of rejecting and then, as it’s impossible to shut down sexuality, what happens is it gets channelled into other areas. Occasionally that can be positive, for example a man decides, once his normal sexuality’s been shut off, to put a lot of effort into his work.

“But then there’s people like Adolf Hitler, who was incredibly sexually repressed and abused as a child, who then decides to conquer the world to make up for it. You can have that sexual energy channelled into good and bad directions but it is very, very dangerous to repress it,” he adds.

It would appear there are many problems associated with censoring and repressing sex, and sexuality, with the dangers of doing so well documented. This is not to say that Eros supports sexual content becoming more accessible to children, we do NOT. However we do believe it should be accessible to adults, provided that material does not involve illegal activities, such a paedophilia or sexual coercion of any kind.

Meanwhile, it’s important to remember that the dangers of viewing sex and pornography have not been scientifically proven whereas the harm associated with media violence is now a known fact, proven time and again in research study after research study.

But while television and film violence has the potential to create huge problems for our children, it’s nothing compared to the violence of computer games and the consequences we may face by considering this form of entertainment mere ‘child’s play’.

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