Harm

[Cris_Rowan]

What are the long term effects of children viewing media violence (if any)?

[loriroberts]

As an outreach ECE coordinator, I see the damage violence in media causes in young children, particularly those at risk for social and emotional development issues. It is known that very young children can not differentiate from fiction and reality on television. Many of these young children are watching tv unsupervised or with older siblings, therefore, no one is able to explain to them that the violence they see is acting. Children "do" by seeing behaviours modelled to them. This is the worst kind of harm; children are learning to be violent and aggressive in their interactions and adults are often not capable themselves to deal with the reprecussions of the media violence.