Televison and Growing Up: The Impact of Televised Violence. A Report to the Surgeon General from the Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Televison and Social Behavior

摘要

This report is the result of over two years of effort by a distinguished committee of behavioral scientists. Their task has been difficult. The impact of televised violence on the viewer, as a reading of the report will show, is embedded in a complicated set of related variables. The conscientious effort by the committee to avoid an oversimplification of the problem has produced a document which may seem, at times, too technical. However, I believe that this report and the five volumes of research reports, which serve as a basis for the committee conclusions, make a major contribution to an understanding of the role of television in influencing the social behavior of children and young people. The conclusions reached by the committee are carefully worded and merit the serious attention of all persons and groups concerned about the effects of viewing television. As the committee notes, these conclusions are based on substantially more knowledge than was available when the committee began its deliberations. But the research still leaves many questions unanswered. Without detracting from the importance of its conclusions, the committee specifies some of these unanswered questions and urges that they be addressed in the future. This report will undoubtedly be scrutinized carefully by people who will be looking for support for their own prior point of view. Individuals with strong convictions on either side of the question about the effects of televised violence may not be satisfied. What these individuals will fail to recognize is that this set of conclusions, for the first time in this field of inquiry, sets a solid and extensive base of evidence in an appropriate perspective. In that sense, the report and the research on which it is based represent a major contribution.