NCJ Number
160257
Date Published
1995
Length
6 pages
Annotation
Children have ready access to television when both parents are at work; a new invention, the V-chip, would help "lock out" violent programs and protect children from television violence.
Abstract
There is mounting evidence that violence in the media is one factor that breeds real violence in society. Along with this evidence, public concern has increased, to the point that Congress conducted hearings on the subject. At the hearings, media moguls protested that TV should not be blamed for having caused all the violence occurring in society, but they had difficulty denying that media violence is one of the key ingredients in the complex mix of factors that produce antisocial conduct. Although there is a growing consensus that TV violence is a problem, agreement on a solution is difficult. Remembering that the community agents in charge of the moral development of children are their parents points us toward a remedy. The remedy is to assist parents in discharging their duty to prevent their children from watching harmful television programming. Technology has provided a TV lock that can be programmed by parents to prevent their children from watching what parents do not want them to see. It is a chip that reads signals sent over the airwaves. The technology is similar to that now used to transmit closed-caption information to deaf viewers. The parent punches a number into the lock, setting it at a given violence rating, then protects it from tampering through a childproof code, and the chip does the rest. Media executives fear that parents will set V-chips to curtail significantly the amount of TV exposure of all kinds rather than just exposure to violence. Given such resistance from producers of programming, the public should pressure television set manufacturers to provide the locks as an option at a reasonable cost.