Literature Review
It is acknowledged that media such as television, music, music videos, movies, video games, internet and other visual implements penetrate our daily lives in one form or another. This concept is especially applied to teenagers. Today, adolescents usually go straight home after school. However, they are not dedicating their time on homework or revision. Instead, they are mostly tempted to spend time being entertained with watching television and listening to music. These two amusements have already become their principle life activities.
From time to time, numerous experts and government authorities examine the impact of television and music on teen violence extensively. In general, these investigations have documented consistently that exposure to these two media contributes to aggressive behaviour in viewers and may influence their perceptions about violence in the real world. More than that, 98% of American homes have a television and 67% of these homes also subscribe to cable TV. American teenagers watch an average of 20 hours of television a week. Besides, American teens normally spend around 30 hours per week on listening Rock/Rap music. The violent song lyrics have attracted a great deal of attention. As a result, television and music are always blamed for contributing to teen violence.
By 2002, the time teenagers spending on television and music have dropped by one- third compared to 1990, though it is still at a high usage rate. However, the youth violence rate is not lowered. It even climbed to the peak for the past two decades. In addition, those studies on television and music were conducted twenty years ago. The findings would not be reliable anymore as the society had changed dramatically since 1980s. This paper is going to examine why television and music do not associate with teen violence and explore some other possible factors.
How television violence