Persuasive Speech

Television’s Impact on Society

The average child watches about 38 hours of television in a week. By the time a child reaches the age of 18 they will have watched on average a minimum of 15,000 hours of TV. (Howard-Barr ) It is obvious by sheer number of hours of exposure that TV would be a strong influence on its viewers. From the programming, topics, content, advertising and marketing the television is providing a huge buffet for our viewing pleasure. It comes down to the question of positive or negative impact. Television has a negative effect on society by showing violence, sexuality and poor eating habits.

Violence in television can be translated into a more violent personality. In the massive amount of television watched there are nearly 936,000 acts of violence viewed every year by children. Seeing all of this violence reduces the “shock factor” desensitizing children and adult viewers to gruesome acts of crime committed on TV. (Johnson) Overwhelmingly, these violent acts go unpunished and sometimes even glamorized belittling the wrongness of the violence. It is no wonder that people develop the idea that violence is ok and can be used to solve problems. (Larson) Thousands of studies have shown the negative impact and “increased aggressive behavior” of children and young adults who watch TV. (Kittleson) The crimes

committed on TV do not mirror the real world. The majority of violent acts on TV are murder while in real life the percent of crimes that are murders are less than one percent. (Larson)

Violence is not the only concern for young TV viewers. Actors, scenarios, and commercials on television are overly sexualized. Not only do the actors and actresses give unrealistic expectations and reduce self-confidence they also introduce children to sexual topics at an earlier age. (Kittleson) Standards of acceptability on television have moved far from the conservative beginnings in the early 1950’s. At that time, it was considered sexually insensitive...