Kid's TV shows too aggressive
If you’re relying on the TV ratings system to help you police the TV programs your child is watching, you may need to pay more attention to their content. A new study carried out by psychologists from Iowa State University and Linfield College has found that the ratings system may underestimate the degree of aggressive content included in kids’ TV shows.
Jennifer Linder, associate professor of psychology at Linfield, and Douglas Gentile, assistant professor of psychology at Iowa State, analyzed the favorite TV shows of 95 5th grade girls and found higher levels of physical aggression in designated children’s programs (rated TV-Y and TV-Y7) than among programs for general audiences (rated TV-G, TV-PG, etc.).
“Parents assume that higher ratings indicate more aggression, but the TV ratings don’t measure what parents expect that they measure,’ says Gentile, who is also director of research for the Minneapolis-based National Institute on Media and the Family.
The study is the first to report a link between viewing TV verbal aggression and a child’s resulting verbal aggression. The results also show that exposure to televised physical aggression was associated with a variety of negative behaviors in the 5th grade girls, according to reports by their teachers.
“Another problem is that the ratings do not provide information about other types of aggression, such as verbal or indirect aggression,’ Gentile says. “This is a problem because we know from this study and others that these types of televised aggression also affect children.”
The researchers had the girls nominate their favorite television programs and frequency of viewing. Each of the 76 nominated programs was then analyzed for content showing indirect, physical and verbal aggression. Behaviors in which harm was intended were coded as acts of aggression, even if that aggression was indirect. “Indirect aggression is identified as harmful behaviors that are non-physical,” Linder says. “These include attempts to harm through techniques such as rumor-spreading, social exclusion and ignoring.” These are bullying tactics that tend to be more common among girls.
The content analyses of the programs were then compared with their respective industry ratings. TV-Y7 programs – those designed for children age 7 and older, including cartoons such as Digimon, Pokemon and Scooby Doo – were found to contain the highest level of physical violence, nearly three times as much as the next highest category (TV-14). Linder and Gentile conclude that the ratings’ ‘fantasy violence’ (FV) label for animated violence is misleading and may actually serve to increase children’s access to harmful violent content by reducing parental concern.
The researchers also compared the types of programs a child viewed with their teacher’s report on their aggressive and pro-social behaviors. They found a strong link between the viewing of TV aggression and children’s aggressive behavior.
“There's ample evidence that physical aggression on television is associated with increases in aggressive behavior,” Linder says. “But there was little until this study that has shown a link between televised indirect aggression and resulting aggression among American children.” The authors argue that indirect aggression should be addressed in any future improvements to the ratings systems.
The study is published in the March/April issue of the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology.