PERSPECTIVE: How Movie and TV Violence Hits Children; Is There Too Much Violence on Television and Is It Time to Curb It? John Beyer, Director of the Organisation Mediawatch-UK Argues That Media Violence Cannot Be Ignored

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Byline: John Beyer

Is there too much violence on television? Is there a connection between the violence shown on television and the increasing violence and aggression in our society? I think there is.

In his most interesting series, Child of our Time, on BBC1, Professor Robert Winston said: "The average British three-year-old is glued to a TV or computer screen for nearly five hours a day and almost half of all three-year-olds have a TV in their bedroom. Suddenly the outside world is coming into these children's lives."

He asked: "So does what they watch influence their behaviour? Most scientists now think that TV can encourage violent tendencies. Experiments show how dangerous seeing the wrong kind of lessons on TV could be on a child's developing idea of how to behave."

Following the release of the brutally and senselessly violent film Natural Born Killers, a BBC Panorama programme in 1995, …