Television was introduced in 1945

• From 1945 to 1974 homicides in the United States increased 93%
• In a national survey conducted in 1991 by an awards festival for the film industry, respondents were asked what had the most influence on society.

Respondents answered:

66% stated Movies / TV

14% stated Government

7% stated Education

6% stated Music

5% stated Religion

2% stated Other

• 1969: President’s “Blue Ribbon” National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence cites television violence as a contributor to violence and our society’s problem with violence.
• 1972: Surgeon General’s office issues report citing the link between television/movie violence and aggressive behavior. (This is the same Surgeon General who issued the report on the link between tobacco and cancer, why have we heard all about the one, but not the other?)
• 1976: The House of Delegates of the American Medical Association adopts resolution “to actively oppose television programs containing violence, as well as products and/or services sponsoring such programs,” in “recognition of the fact that television violence is a risk factor threatening the health and welfare of young Americans, indeed our future society.”
• 1982: The National Institute of Mental Health reviews 2,500 worldwide studies and reports that there is a clear consensus on the “strong” link between television violence and aggressive behavior.
• 1984: Attorney General’s Task Force on Family Violence states that evidence is “overwhelming” that television violence contributes to real violence.
• 1984: Eron and Huesmann, in a 22 year study following 875 boys and girls from ages 8-30, find that boys who viewed high levels of television were four to five times more likely to become violent criminals, and children who watched more violent television were more likely as adults to use violence to punish their own children.
• 1992: Journal of the American Medical Association publishes Dr. Brandon Centerwall’s study concluding that, “the introduction of television into the United States in the 1950’s caused a subsequent doubling of the homicide rate,” and “if, hypothetically, television technology had never been developed, there would today be 10,000 fewer murders each year in the United States, 70,000 fewer rapes and 700,000 fewer injurious assaults.”
• In 1992 a Washington Post article stated that, “the preponderance of evidence from more than 3,000 research studies over two decades shows that the violence portrayed on television influences the attitudes and behavior of children who watch it.”
• 1992: American Psychological Association report, “Big World, Small World Screen,” concludes that the 40 years of research on the link between television violence and real-life violence has been ignored, states that the “scientific debate is over,” and calls for federal policy to protect society from media violence.
• 1998: “Children and Media Violence;” A Yearbook from UNESCO is International Clearinghouse on Children and Violence on the Screen, reviews worldwide studies of media violence from 25 countries and outlines the organization’s concern about the “global aggressive culture” being formed by violent television, particularly violent U.S. television.
• 1999: Lt. Col. David Grossman, a U.S. Army expert on the psychology of combat and author of the Pulitzer nominated book, “On Killing”, testifies before the Senate Commerce Committee and to the House Judiciary Committee that the U.S. Marine Corps uses the video game “Doom” to train their Marines. The U.S. Army uses a modified Super Nintendo game as a marksmanship trainer, while law enforcement agencies worldwide use a firearms training simulator identical to shooting games in the video arcades. Col. Grossman analyzed 50 years of data on simulators, combined with 30 years of data on screen violence, to explain how these video games, in the hands of children, serve as “murder simulators” that provide the skill and the will to kill. In his national address to the nation after the Littleton shootings President Clinton cited Col. Grossman and his research.
• 1999: In the aftermath of the Littleton school shootings, President Clinton, arguably the most pro-media President the U.S. has ever had, stated: “Our children are being fed a dependable daily dose of violence – and it sells. Now, 30 yeas of studies have shown that this desensitizes our children to violence, and to the consequences of it.” President Clinton’s Surgeon General - when asked on “Meet the Press” if he could do a Surgeon General’s Report on media violence - replied: “I can do another Surgeon General’s Report, but why don’t we begin by reading the 1972 Surgeon General’s Report that clearly established the link between media violence and real violence.”
• 1999: On June 1, 1999, President Clinton asked the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice to undertake a study of whether the movie, music recording, and computer and video game industries market and advertise products with violent content to youngsters. The President's request paralleled Congressional calls for a study. Please feel free to view the whole report at: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2000/09/youthviol.htm .
• 2000: Recent studies have shown that American children spend an average of 41/2 to 5 hours a day engrossed in television, video games, computers and other media, all of which often have violent content.
• 2000: The boy accused of taking hostages at a Glendale Elementary School had a fascination with GoldenEye 007, a violent video game. And during the Oct. 24 hostage ordeal at the school, Sean Botkin, 14, wore camouflage clothing with the nickname of one of the game's characters emblazoned above the left breast pocket, according to a videotaped interview of Botkin released Friday by Glendale police. GoldenEye 007, based on a James Bond movie, features a character called Dmitri Mishkin, whose nickname, "Mishki," Botkin had on his clothing. The game features spy-style and covert tactics as players confront and kill enemies with an array of weapons.
• 2000: A year-long Federal Trade Commission (FTC) study has found that movie studios, record companies and video game producers have aggressively marketed violent entertainment products to children, the Washington Post reported in its Sunday edition. A draft report says that studios pitched R-rated movies during television shows with mostly teen-age audiences despite warnings that such movies may be inappropriate for youths, the paper reported, citing sources familiar with the FTC's findings. Additionally, the agency found that producers of violent video games advertised products geared to mature audiences in magazines aimed at young teenagers, the sources said according to the newspaper. The report, ordered last year after a series of shootings at schools across the United States, is expected to be released next month and the Senate Commerce Committee is planning to hold a hearing, the Washington Post said. Investigators for the FTC also found that children under the age of 17 were often sold tickets to R-rated movies, which are restricted to adults unless children are accompanied by their parents or guardians, the paper said. In a poll conducted by the agency, parents said they wanted more information about the content of movies beyond what is now provided by the Motion Picture Association of America's rating system.
• 2000: The American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry have together issued a statement that: "The conclusion of the public health community, based on over 30 years of research, is that viewing entertainment violence can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values and behaviors, particularly in children."
• 2001: Researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine at the Pediatric
  Academic Societies have found that adolescents who watch wrestling on TV are exposed to a high frequency of violence between men and women, alcohol use and hearing women referred to in derogatory terms such as "bitch," according to the study. In addition, the scenarios played out in the TV dramas often present violence as a solution to a problem.
• 2001: LONDON - Research has shown that children who play computer games for hours at a time risk stunted brain growth and a loss of self-control. A study found the thought processes required by computer games are too simple to stimulate crucial areas of the brain, leading to underdevelopment and behavioral problems such as violence.
• 2001: The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and the American Medical
  Association have both, on separate occasions, stated essentially, "The debate is over. Violent video and video games can be linked as factors" in rampage-style incidents. One of the premier people who are fighting for regulation of violent video and video games to children is Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman. His book, "Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill" was co-authored with Dr. Gloria DeGaetano. This book is a good read, with in-depth research and is as real as tomorrow's headlines.
• 2001: An Oklahoma researcher claims teenagers who play violent video games such as "Doom" and "Soldier of Fortune" are more likely to fight and argue with teacher's claims. Paul Lynch, a third-year medical student at the University of Oklahoma, will present his findings to the Society for Research in Child Development in Minneapolis.
• 2001: Attorney General John Ashcroft said that video games "literally teach shooting" and other forms of violence in entertainment are part of the problem when it comes to school shootings. Interviewed on morning television shows a day after a shooting at a high school in El Cajon, Calif., Ashcroft called on the entertainment industry to start helping us devote ourselves to an ethic of resolving anger or problems in a way other than violence. Ashcroft said on CBS's "The Early Show", "Even the news industry can report incidents like this in ways that maybe don't promote copycat replications" Ashcroft said more needs to be done to curtail cultural influences that have created an "ethic of violence" that leads kids to violence. He said on ABC's "Good Morning America", "The entertainment industry, with it's video games and the like, which sometimes literally teach shooting and all, we've got to ask ourselves how do we as a culture, respond to be more responsible?" " In citing violent video games, Ashcroft went further than he has previously to suggest that violent entertainment could be partially to blame for students' turning to guns and violence.
• 2001: A study conducted by all three of Britain's major media watchdogs has concluded that televised wrestling is sparking copycat violence among children. The report observed that although most adults see wrestling as staged entertainment, most children do not. It quoted one 12-year-old as telling researchers, "My brothers and I get into power fight. I don't hit them with weapons, just my stool." The report observed, "Children might be dangerously misled into imagining that inflicting injuries is not serious because victims [in the TV matches] reliably get up right away." The report also criticized the wrestling programs for portraying women as sex objects.
• 2001: Oklahoma State Senate passed unanimously a bill that prohibits selling or renting violent video games to children under seventeen. Violence is defined based on an "M" or "A" rating. Now heading to the House, but with that vote, I would think the chances are good.
• 2001: Science magazine showed adolescents watching more than three hours of daily TV are much more likely to engage in violent behavior as adults.
• 2001: Research conducted over the past 30 years leads to the conclusion that televised violence does influence viewers' attitudes, values and behavior (Hearold, 1986; Murray, 2000, 1994, 1973; Paik and Comstock, 1994; Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior, 1972)
• 2002: According to a recent undercover survey conducted by the Federal Trade
  Commission, 78% of unaccompanied children ages 13-16 were able to buy adult-rated games at retail outlets.
• 2002: Teenagers who watch more than an hour of television a day are much more likely to become violent than the rare adolescent who watches less. One of the most definitive studies yet to link watching television with violent behavior finds both men and women are affected by violent programs on television - but, "teen-aged boys are especially at risk." - Columbia University
• 2002: People who play video games for more than two hours a day tend to be irritable and have trouble concentrating on other tasks, according to a new Japanese study. The findings were based on a study conducted by researchers at Tokyo's Nihon University.
• 2002: The Warren Grant Magnusen Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health states extensive research with PET Scans, Positron Emission Tomagraphy, has shown the same areas in the brain are activated while performing violent acts as are while committing violence with violent video games. Also, tension, blood pressure, respiration, and cardiac activity increase in those using violent games.
• 2002: Scenes of torture and sadism appeared on network entertainment TV at a rate nearly double that over the previous two years. In a count requested by The Christian Science Monitor, The Parents Television Council (PTC), a TV watchdog group, logged 70 instances of scenes of graphic torture or sadism on network entertainment TV from Sept. 1, 2001, until earlier this month. In the two-year period previous to this, it logged 39.
• 2002: A recent survey found that 92% of U.S. kids-ages 2 to 17-play video games, and their parents bought 225 million of them last year to the tune of 6.4 billion.
• 2002: Grand Theft Auto 3, the No.1 video game in the U.S. with 4.2 million copies since October 2001, at $50 a pop.
• 2003: Researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to look at patterns of brain activity of adolescents.
• 2003: Researchers found that teens had different activity patterns in the frontal lobe portion of their brain depending on their degree of exposure to media violence. The frontal lobe portion of the brain is involved in impulse control, attention and other cognitive activities.
• 2003: A third of all 0-6 year olds (36%) have a TV in their bedroom, more then one in four (27%) have a VCR or DVD, one in ten have a video game player, and 7% have a computer. Thirty percent of 0-3 year olds have a TV in their room, and 43% of 4-6 year olds do. - Kaiser Family Foundation
• 2003: Parents of young children appear to have a largely positive view about TV and computers. They are significantly more likely to say TV "mostly helps" children's learning (43%) than "mostly hurts" it (27%); the overwhelming majority (72%) say computers"mostly help" children's learning. About half of parents consider educational TV shows (58%)and videos (49%) "very important" to children's intellectual development. They are also far more likely to say they have seen their children imitate positive behaviors from TV like sharing or helping (78%) than negative ones like hitting or kicking (36%). However, a majority of parents (59%) say their 4-6 year old boys imitate aggressive behavior from TV(v. 35% for girls the same age). - Kaiser Family Foundation
• 2003: The vast majority of parents say they have rules about TV, including 90% with rules about what their kids watch and 69% with rules about how they can watch. The study indicates the rules may have an affect: children with the time-related rules spend an average of almost a half hour less per day watching TV than other children do. - Kaiser Family Foundation
• 2003: Half of all 4-6 year olds have played video games, and one in four play several times a week or more. Differences between boys and girls have already begun to emerge at this young age: 56% of boys have played a video game, compared to 36% of girls; and in a typical day, 24% of boys will play compared to 8% of girls. - Kaiser Family Foundation
• 2004: Study after study has found that children often behave more violently after watching media violence. The violence they engage in ranges from trivial
  aggressive play to injurious behavior with serious medical consequences.
  Children also show higher levels of hostility after viewing violence, and
  the effects of this hostility range from being in a nasty mood to an
  increased tendency to interpret a neutral comment or action as an attack.
  In addition, children can be desensitized by media violence, becoming less
  distressed by real violence and less likely to sympathize with victims.
  Finally, media violence makes children fearful, and these effects range from
  a general sense that the world is dangerous, to full-blown anxieties,
  nightmares, sleep disturbances, and other trauma symptoms.
• 2004: Meta-analyses, which statistically combine all the findings in a particular
  area, demonstrate that there is a consensus on the negative effects of media
  violence. They also show that the effects are strong – stronger than the
  well-known relationship between children's exposure to lead and low I.Q.
  scores, for example. These effects cannot be ignored as inconclusive or
  inconsequential.
• 2004: A study from the University of Michigan shows that TV viewing between the ages of 6 and 10 predicts antisocial behavior as a young adult. In this study, both males and females who were heavy TV-violence viewers as children were significantly more likely to engage in serious physical aggression and criminal behavior later in life; in addition, the heavy violence viewers were twice as likely as the others to engage in spousal abuse when they became adults. This analysis controlled for other potential contributors to antisocial behavior, including socioeconomic status and parenting practices.
• 2004: The long-term effects of media on fears and anxieties are also striking. Research shows that intensely violent images often induce anxieties that linger, interfering with both sleeping and waking activities for years. Many young adults report that frightening movie images that they saw as children have remained on their minds in spite of their repeated attempts to get rid of them. They also report feeling intense anxieties in non threatening situations as a result of having been scared by a movie or television program – even though they now know that there is nothing to fear. [For example, you might find it logical that many people who have seen the movie Jaws worry about encountering a shark whenever they swim in the ocean. But you would be surprised to learn how many of these people are still uncomfortable swimming in lakes or pools because of the enduring emotional memory of the terror they experienced viewing this movie as a child.] Findings are beginning to emerge from research teams mapping the areas of the brain that are influenced by violent images, and these studies promise to help us understand how media violence promotes aggression and to help explain why it has such enduring effects on emotional memory.
• 2004: Click HERE to read in a Word Document the FCC CALL TO ACTION STATEMENT
• 2005: The Family Movie Act of 2005; This bill provided an affirmative right for those who used technology to skip objectionable material, such as profanity, violence, or other adult material, in the audio / video works that they legally purchased.
• 2005: The State of Illinois passes sweeping laws against the sale of violent video games to minors.
• SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - Gov. Rod Blagojevich vowed to appeal a federal judge's ruling that shot down a new Illinois law banning the sale of violent or sexual video games to minors. U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kennelly ruled Friday that Illinois' restrictions are unconstitutional and barred the state from enforcing the law. The Democratic governor and other supporters of the measure have argued that children were being harmed by exposure to games in which characters go on killing sprees or sexual escapades."This battle is not over," Blagojevich said in a statement. "Parents should be able to expect that their kids will not have access to excessively violent and sexually explicit video games without their permission."