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Facts & Quotes

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"If television can sell products and indeed billions of dollars are spent each year in belief that television does influence human behavior, then it can sell images and values." 

- Noel Holston, Television Critic
Star Tribune newspaper, Minneapolis

"In our current social models, power is usually defined as how to control other people rather than how to control oneself and empower other people."

- Cordelia Anderson, Consultant
Sensibilities, Inc.

The average child is likely to have watched 8000 screen murders and more than 100,000 acts of violence by the end of elementary school.  By the end of the teenage years, that figure will double.

- Media & Values, Summer, 1993
David Barry, “Growing Up Violent”

A study conducted by the National Institute on Media and the Family with 600 Minnesota 8th & 9th graders showed that kids who play violent video games (1) tend to see the world as a more hostile and aggressive place; (2) got into more arguments with teachers; (3) were more likely to be involved in physical fights; and (4) got worse grades in school.  Surprisingly, it was the kids who are least naturally aggressive who were 10 times more likely to be involved in physical fights than other nonaggressive kids who don’t play violent video games.

- Study conducted in 2000 by the National Institute on Media and the Family

Since 1955, about 1000 studies, reports, and commentaries concerning the impact of television violence have been published....  The accumulated research clearly demonstrates a correlation between viewing violence and aggressive behavior-- that is, heavy viewers behave more aggressively than light viewers.  Children and adults who watch a large number of aggressive programs also tend to hold attitudes and values that favor the use of aggression to solve conflicts.  These correlations are solid."

- "Big World, Small Screen."
1992 survey by the American Psychological Assn.

"Violent heroes are more harmful than even violent villains.  Children imitate more often the characters whom they like and find most appealing."

- Dr. Joseph Strayhorn, child psychiatrist
Medical College of Pennsylvania.

“Of course, some children watch less television than the average, and others, most often those growing up in poverty, watch much more.   ... Young males growing up in poverty, in homes that lack nonviolent male role models, are the most vulnerable to television’s violence-promoting message.  Boys like this may never get to see an adult man restrain his own anger or control his own violent impulses.  They may never experience nonviolent discipline.  They may never have the chance to see an adult man, or a woman, resolve disputes effectively and assertively, using nonviolent strategies.  Boys living in these circumstances are the ones most susceptible to television’s message that heroes use violence to serve their purposes.”

- Deadly Consequences
by Deborah Prothrow-Stith, M.D.
assistant dean of the Harvard School of Public Health

- "Attacking Violence" by Britt Robson
Mpls/St. Paul Magazine, November 1992

- Dr. Lillian M. Beard
speaking on behalf of
 the American Academy of Pediatrics
and the National Medical Association in testimony to the U.S. Senate

- Thomas Cardinal Wolsey (1471-1530)

American children between the ages of six and eleven watch an average of 26 hours of television a week;  by the time a child graduates from high school, she or he will have watched 22,000 hours of television compared with only 11,000 hours in the classroom.

 - Nielsen TV Rating Service

The average television program contains 5 acts of violence per hour, the average childrens’ program shows 25 acts of violence per hour.

- Center for Media & Public Affairs

- Margaret Mead, anthropologist