Violence in TV and society

How the nature and frequency of forcefulness in telly programs and movies effects socializing and being socialized. Sociology offers a perspective, a view of the world. The sociological perspective opens a window onto unfamiliar worldsand offers a fresh look at familiar ones (Henslin3). With socialization being such a huge part of our daily lives, it is important that we get the right socialization. Today much of our youths socialization skills argon being obtained from mass media sources, and in particular social networking and television.A single glance at a tikerens television show gives you only a slight limpse of the violence demonstrateed in todays children TV shows. As Americans we ar exposed to violence on a daily basis. Just turning on the TV we be bombarded with news of violent acts, and violent TV shows or movies. This has changed violence into a symbol of despair, and a upshot to most situations. and then changing our perspective of symbolic interactionism, an d its relationship to becoming socialized negatively. The symbolism of violence has been altered, desensitizing us to violent acts.Dave Grossman argues that this is something that has long been used in the ilitary to train soldiers to perform their duty, however these akin techniques have been used unintentionally on the general population which more drastic effects. Because this desensitization is fetching place during childhood rather then in late teens and early twenties, the social constraints that are ordinarily emplace to prevent people from acting out such as norms and sanctions have not been instilled the selfsame(prenominal) way they would be in a 18 or 19 year old. The results have been a drastic increase in violence.Television is by far the medium of mass media socialization. Children watch an average of 3 to 4 hours of television a day (AACAP). It has a huge effect on young children. Children are watching people interact, but are not actually interacting. Time that should be spent international interacting with other children has been replaced with televisions, which dramatically reduces childrens social sills. Television satisfies social needs to some extent but does not give real life social skills that can be used. Along with decreased social skills, children are becoming socialized the wrong way.The majority of children perceive things on television as real. When young children visit somebody shot, stabbed, raped, brutalized, degraded, r murdered on TV, to them it is as though it were actually happening. To have a child of three, four, or five watch a splatter movie, learning to relate to a character for the early 90 minutes and then in the last 30 minutes watch helplessly as that new friend is hunted and brutally murdered is the moral and psychological equivalent of introducing your child to a friend, letting her play with that friend, and then butchering that friend in front of your childs eyes.And this happens to our children hundre ds upon hundreds of times. (Grossman) Is this the way we really trust our kids to rick socialized? To answer this question we must dig deeper, and discover what it really means to become socialized. As stated by our book, Socialization makes us human When we are born, we do not cope what it means to be human. We do not nave any ideas. We do not know now to speak, or now to act . We must learn now to do all these things, and only then, do we father a self.With socialization being such a huge part of becoming human it is all important(p) to get the right kind of socialization, which includes Symbolic interactionism. (Henslin) The symbolic interactionism perspective of sociology views society as a carrefour of everyday social nteractions of individuals. Symbolic interactionists also study how people use symbols to create meaning. In study violence, these theorists look at how people in everyday situations define violence, which differs between cultures and settings. (Spark note s) In the US especially violence has become part of the norm.Most children start out watching kid friendly and educational programs, and just about the ages of three or four start watching shows like Tom and Jerry and Loony toons. Although these shows are somewhat kid friendly they still portray violence as acceptable. Violence is portrayed to be comedic. Thus desensitizing kids to violence in an indirect way. As children grow older, parental controls grow loser, allowing children to watch more violent, and adult rated TV shows, and movies. The exposure to violence at such a young age alters values, and norms.Children pay off to perceive violence as normal, and as a solution to everything. Childrens shows like Ben10, Looney Toons, and Power rangers portray the good guys trying to save the word, by taking drastic and most likely violent measures. The change factor of these shows is actually kids becoming more and more desensitized to violence. Although these shows have not been proven to turn a normal child into a deviant. Hundreds of studies of the effects of TV violence on children and teenagers have found that children whitethorn become immune or numb to the horror of violence.They may gradually accept violence as a way to solve problems, or imitate the violence they observe on television and signalise with certain characters, victims and/or victimizers (Grossman). Keeping in mind that Socialization is the core of our existence and ability to interact with others, we can gather that excessive violence on TV shows, has huge negative impact on childrens socialization skills, and most importantly that it affects the symbolic interactionism that takes place in all stages of socialization.